A witness in the on-going trial of a suspected fraudster, Eso Dickson Omogba (aka Esho Dickson), who is being prosecuted before a Federal Capital Territory High Court, Abuja by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC for allegedly defrauding his victim of N17.2million through fraudulent and unauthorized withdrawals from his bank account in a new generation bank, on Thursday told the court how N13million was fraudulently withdrawn from the victim’s account by the accused.
Elo Osigho, the fouth defence witness and staff of the internal control unit of Guaranty Trust Bank while being cross examined by the prosecuting counsel, Joseph Uzor told the court that she made statements to the EFCC in the course of their investigation in which she affirmed that, the sum of N8million transfer and N5million cash withdrawal were fraudulent transacted by the staff on a customer’s account.
Earlier, the defence counsel, B. Adigbe had sought to tender a copy of the witness’ statement to the court but this was opposed by the prosecuting counsel, who told the court that the document was a public document.
Dickson who was arraigned on the 2nd of August 2012 had pleaded not guilty to an 8-count charge of forgery and theft.
Count one reads;
“That you Eso Dickson Omogba (aka Esho Dickson) and others now at large on or about the 15th day of September, 2011 within the jurisdiction of the High Court of the Federal Capital Territory agreed amongst yourselves to do an illegal act to wit; theft of N17, 200,000 (Seventeen million two hundred thousand Naira) and thereby committed an offence contrary to Section 97 and punishable under Section 287 of the Penal Code’’.
Prosecution had called three witnesses in the course of the trial; PW1- Dr Saleb El-Yakub Abdullahi who is the complaint whose account was debited fraudulently ; PW2 -Koyejo Adetiloye, the investigating officer, and Benedict Agweye, a Forensic expert who tendered a forensic report indicating that the signature of the complainant was forged.
Justice O. O Goodluck adjourned the matter to October 27, 2015 for continuation of defence.
Media & Publicity
12th June, 2015