On Thursday, December 14, 2023, Justice M.A Shambu of the Bauchi State High Court handed down a one-year prison sentence to Ibrahim Abdullahi. The conviction was for the theft of N30,000 (Thirty Thousand Naira only) through fraudulent swapping of an Automated Teller Machine (ATM) card.
The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) revealed this on its X (formerly Twitter) page, stating that the Gombe Zonal Command arraigned Abdullahi on two counts of theft. One of the charges stated: “That you, Ibrahim Abdullahi, sometime in September 2023 or thereabout at Bauchi, Bauchi State, within the jurisdiction of this honourable court, committed theft of N30,000.00 (Thirty Thousand Naira) by taking it out of the possession of Zainab Usman, through the use of her UBA ATM card contrary to Section 287 of the Penal Code Law.”
Upon pleading guilty to the charges, the EFCC counsel, A.B. Kware, requested the court to convict and sentence Abdullahi accordingly. In contrast, his counsel, Jamilu Salihu, appealed to the court for leniency, stating that his client was a first-time offender who had vowed to reform.
Justice Shambu sentenced Abdullahi to one year in prison or to pay a fine of N20,000 (Twenty Thousand Naira) and ordered him to repay the sum of N30,000 to his victim.
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Abdullahi’s path to the Correctional Center began when a petitioner claimed that she received a debit alert of N30,000 from her UBA account on November 22, 2023. Earlier that day, she had gone to the bank to withdraw money and met Abdullahi, who offered to help her operate the ATM. After handing over her card to him, he inserted it into the machine and claimed the transaction was “unsuccessful” before returning the card to her. However, shortly after she returned home, she received a debit alert of N30,000 and discovered that the card Abdullahi had returned was not hers.
Upon his arrest and interrogation, Abdullahi admitted that he had moved from Kano State to Bauchi State to engage in ATM card swapping to fund his upcoming wedding. He also confessed that he had mastered the act of card swapping on his own and that the five different ATM cards found in his possession belonged to his victims.