Judge Oyewole and EFCC jail e-mail scammer: Hope for scam victims?
From Niyi Adebisi (USA)
July 17, 2006.
JUNE 22, 2006 was a sad day for the convicted internet predator, Mr. Yekini Labaika. The 24-year-old conman tasted the wrath of law as it was delivered by Judge Oyewole at the Ikeja High Court on Thursday, June 22, 2006, after the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission's (EFCC) officer that was the case's prosecutor argued beyond any reasonable doubt that Yekini was truly the bad egg amongst Nigerians who swindled Ms. Thumbelina Hinshaw of a whopping sum of over thirty thousand United States' dollars in 2005.
Mr. Yekini Labaika earned nineteen years behind
bars for his heinous activities against the naive
forty-two-year old American internet love seeker
who allegedly fell prey to Mr. Labaika by posting
her profile on internet that she was seeking a
reliable Muslim brother as a lover from any part
of the world. Mr. Labaika reportedly contacted
this unsuspecting lady and pretended to be a
Muslim American expatriate oil worker in Nigeria
who was looking for a Muslim sister to spend
the rest of his life with. Ms. Hinshaw, who must have thought that she had finally found a trustworthy and loving Muslim brother, quickly became a money minting machine to this criminal. Capitalizing on the genuine love that Ms. Hinshaw, a practicing nurse in the United States, had fallen into, the convicted Mr. Yekini Labaika embarked on non-relenting demands for money and other valuables from his vulnerable internet lover who apparently was prepared to do anything to satisfy her 'to be better half'. Using series of pretexts, Mr. Labaika reportedly succeeded in milking over thirty thousand dollars out of Ms. Hinshaw.
The doom's day of Mr. Labaika however became inevitable when Ms. Hinshaw decided to travel to Lagos, Nigeria months after the commencement of their internet romance. Her arrival in Lagos was reportedly greeted with series of revelations that eventually convinced her that she had, all along, been a victim of one of the most heartless swindlers who had turned the modern days' technology into an instrument of crime. Agents of the EFCC, an anti-corruption brainchild of the President Obasanjo's administration, quickly responded to the report of the inhumane acts of Mr. Labaika against Ms. Hinshaw and the rest became a sorry story for this young man who had decided to use his talents against a creature of the very God that endowed him with the talents.
Mr. Labaika is definitely not the only criminal that preys on vulnerable victims like Ms. Hinshaw. Though Nigerians may not be the only culprits of this heinous internet crime, the image that is being portrayed of Nigeria by criminals like Mr. Labaika does not help our reputation as a people around the world.
In 2003, the Fox 5 Television Station unfairly singled out Nigerians as the primary culprits of e-mail scam. There are numerous business entities around the world today that will boldly decline to transact business with anyone who identifies himself or herself as a Nigerian. The true victims of social vices like internet scams attributable to a handful of Nigerians like Mr. Labaika are not only people like Ms. Hinshaw, as detailed above, or numerous other alleged victims like Mr. David Carpenter, who allegedly lost over seventeen thousand dollars to a suspected internet scammer in Nigeria, but include honest and law abiding Nigerians all over the world who, unfortunately, have to nurse the wounds inflicted on Nigerians' image by the acts of few miscreants like Mr. Labaika.
The laudable and incorruptible verdict of Judge Oyewole that capped the exemplary, non-compromising and commendable investigative efforts of the EFCC under the gallant leadership of Mr. Nuhu Ribadu that eventually sent Mr. Labaika behind bars is a ray of golden light in the horizon that signifies that we, the real victims of social vices in Nigeria, still have hope that the criminals shall not operate with impunity for long. We pray that the Nigeria legal system borrows a leaf from this pacesetting act of Judge Joseph Oyewole and that the corruption laden law enforcement agents of our mother land emulate the EFCC and help in purging Nigeria of the remaining miscreants like Mr. Labaika.
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