Siblings Elizabeth Oladimeji and Paul Atoyebi were running their POS agency business when they received N50,000 and N29,000 credit alerts in their agency bank accounts on September 27.
Oladimeji and Atoyebi did not know the sender of the funds, and they also received no instruction for the use of the funds. What they did not know was that the funds were the proceeds of an armed robbery on September 22.
Police officers from the Lagos Police Command figured this out but decided to hold the POS agents responsible for the armed robbery incident and charge them to court, instead of going after the original culprits.
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Account statement showing N50,000 credit alert in Oladimeji’s POS agency bank account on September 27, 2022.
“In September, armed robbers robbed two women at different times on different dates. The first victim was the wife of a DSS official while the second person was a market woman. So, when they robbed the market woman, they transferred the funds from her account to the account of the wife of the DSS official. From that account, they started sending the money to different POS agents to withdraw cash. I happened to be one of the POS agents who received these money transfers. My brother received some of the money too,” Oladimeji told FIJ on Wednesday.
At the time of the armed robbery on September 22, Atoyebi was at his POS stand at a motor park in the Adeniji Adele area of Lagos. Oladimeji was tending to her three-month-old preterm baby at her home in Asese, Ibafo, at the same time.
“They transferred N50,000 to me and they transferred N29,000 to my brother. We knew nothing about the case behind the transfer until around the third week in March this year when the DSS blocked our agency account with Access Bank. After a while, they released the account.”
DSS ARREST, TRANSFER TO PANTI
Oladimeji told FIJ how Atoyebi was suddenly arrested and taken into custody at the State Security Service office in Ikoyi.
The SSS, also known as the Department of State Services (DSS), also invited Oladimeji and at least three other POS agents.
“In the first or second week of April, they picked my brother up at his store. Later on, they invited me to their office too. So, from the DSS office in Ikoyi, they transferred us to the State Criminal Investigation and Intelligence Department (SCIID) in Panti in that April,” Oladimeji said.
“They eventually granted us bail but told us to come to their office every Tuesday. So, we went to the office every Tuesday to meet with the complainant at Panti in order to discuss the way forward. She said that she wanted the sum of N1.6 million. We told her that we only received N50,000 and N29,000. There were other people who were picked and the total amount that was diverted to our accounts collectively was N375,000 at that time. We told the complainant that we would like to repay the money that came into our account and she said no. Let’s sum it up to N400,000. She said, no. She insisted that she wanted N1.6 million in total.
According to Oladimeji, the IPO at the police station said that the total amount of money the complainant lost was N700,000. The police officers advised the POS agents to pay stolen N700,000 to the complainant so they could close the case, but the complainant insisted that she wanted the money she had spent in the course of the investigation too.
“We let her know that we were not the people who robbed her, that we were victims too. She did not accept,” Oladimeji told FIJ.
“We dragged this case from April to June 20. On June 20, when we went for the usual Tuesday meetings, we met the investigating police officers in charge and they said that Yetunde Cardoso was now involved in the case because she was an acquaintance of the complainant. So, when we got there we met with Cardoso and explained our side.
“She said that if we could not pay the N1.6 million she would be charging the case to court.”
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Yetunde Cardoso, OC Legal, Lagos State Police Command. PHOTO CREDIT: The PUNCH
Cardoso is the Officer-In-Charge (OC) of the legal department at the Lagos State Police Command.
“We told her that we would pay, but after a while, the deputy commissioner at Panti got involved and told us that he would help us to settle the case on June 21. When we got there on the 21st, we found out that they had charged the case to court, contrary to what we had earlier discussed the other day, and from there, they took us to court,” Oladimeji continued.
“When we got to Yaba Magistrate Court, they remanded the men among us and granted me and the DSS officer’s wife (she was also picked up) bail because we had babies at hand. In the charges, they claimed that the guys robbed them and we received the funds in our accounts so ours was not an offence to keep us in prison.”
Cardoso signed the first counts leveled against the POS agents at the magistrate court in Yaba, Lagos.
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DPP ADVISED THE COURT TO RELEASE SUSPECTS, POLICE FORCED THEIR RE-ARREST AND NEW INVESTIGATION
FIJ saw documents that showed that the Directorate of Public Prosecutions (DPP) at the Lagos Ministry of Justice found the POS agents, including Atoyebi and Oladimeji, guiltless of the armed robbery charges.
The DPP formalised its legal advice to release the men who were imprisoned up till that point.
The DPP’s advice.
“From June 21, they remanded the guys for 30 days. After that, we got the DPP advice which exonerated all of us from the case that we had no case to answer and that we had a court date to appear in court. On getting to the court on Wednesday, we realised that Yetunde Cardoso had stepped in again and she had disrupted the DPP’s position. The case had been going on for months in Panti, but they now said that the police wanted to investigate the matter. Meanwhile, they wanted to remand all of us again on a case we knew nothing about. They know that we are all POS agents who have certificates.”
FIJ understands that the male suspects were still remanded in prisons in the Ikoyi area of Lagos at press time.
Oladimeji told FIJ that the incarceration had broken her brother.
“He was crying after the court session yesterday,” Atoyebi’s sister told FIJ on Thursday.
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THEY WILL STAY IN PRISON FOR AS LONG AS THE CASE IS IN COURT
FIJ spoke with Juliet Akah, a lawyer defending the suspects, on Thursday.
Akah believes that Cardoso is needlessly punishing the men who played no role in the September 27 armed robbery.
“These people, obviously, clearly are POS agents. All six of them. When we were at the police station, the complainant was demanding millions of naira but these people were not robbers. They did not rob this woman,” Akah explained.
“Even if they are to pay anything, it should be the money that went to their respective POS bank accounts.
“When the IPO finished the investigation, the IPO concluded that the investigation showed there was no basis to charge them to court. He recommended their release. I heard that the complainant is related to the OC Legal in Panti (Cardoso). They were on administrative bail but she decided to take over the case file and immediately charged them to court.
“Instead of charging them to court for receiving stolen property, she charged the four male POS agents to court for armed robbery and causing the complainant injury. She charged the two female suspects with receiving stolen property because they had little children. The women received bail while the court remanded the four men.
“There is no ingredient proving that these suspects committed the offence. Cardoso wrote another letter to force another investigation and keep the POS agents behind bars.
Letter from Cardoso asking for more time to carry out further investigation while keeping Atoyebi and the others in prison indefinitely
“Now, they are going to remain in prison as long as nothing is done.”
Akah told this reporter that not all the people who were initially invited over this particular case remained in custody. According to Akah, one of the POS agents was shown favour and released because he had connections with a judge.
“Only those who don’t have ‘strong legs’ are left to the punishment of the OC legal,” Akah said on Thursday.
Richard Atagahmen, an investigating police officer working with the SCIID at Panti, redirected FIJ to the state police public relations officer when we asked about Cardoso.
A text sent to Benjamin Hundeyin, the Lagos Police Public Relations Officer, had not received a response at press time.
The post SP Yetunde Cardoso Keeps Innocent POS Agents in Lagos Prison for Armed Robbery appeared first on Foundation For Investigative Journalism.