Police nab impersonator seeking bail for fraudsters

The Zone 2 Police Command in Lagos has detained a man posing as a police officer for allegedly trying to secure bail for two detained international fraudsters.  

Assistant Inspector-General of Police, Adegoke Fayoade, confirmed the incident on Friday.

The fraudsters were previously arrested with forged certificates from a Ghanaian university and are accused of conducting internet scams in multiple foreign countries.

They had also reportedly offered a bribe of N66 million to the command’s operatives.

The impostor, claiming to be a Deputy Superintendent of Police (DSP) from Edo State, entered the zonal command’s anti-corruption unit alongside a lawyer and attempted to arrange bail for the suspects, assuring authorities of their availability when needed.

The AIG explained that when he was told to produce his identity card as a police officer, he presented a police warrant card.

He said, “On closer scrutiny, it was discovered that in the warrant card, his picture with beards showed that he was hanging the rank of an Assistant Superintendent of Police (ASP), with the name, Sunday Udoka.

“When detectives turned the back of the warrant card he presented; where the Inspector-General of Police was supposed to sign, an undecipherable signature with abbreviation DCD dated 13th May, 2024, was seen.

“This heightened the curiosity of detectives and he was subjected to more interrogation which ended in his opening up to confess that he prepared the warrant card, fixed his passport photograph after appending a signature in it.

“He further confessed that he is a police inspector serving at the Anti-kidnapping Unit in Edo Command and that the suspects were his friends,” he said.

The AIG said the suspect further claimed that he came into the force as an ICT specialist in 2014, with a diploma in Computer Science before he later went for conversion in Jos.

Fayoade said that the suspect said he has no police identity card, but forged one so as to use it secure bail of the detained suspects.

“It was based on these shocking confessions, he was detained at the station, while detectives are intensifying efforts to ascertain the veracity of all his claims and the level of relationship with the suspects,” he said.

The AIG said that the suspect would be charged to court. (NAN)