The Nigeria Police Force has arrested 21 suspects in connection with separate cybercrime and fraud investigations, including a major case involving the alleged manipulation of MTN Nigeria’s billing system.
Details of the arrests were made public on Thursday by the Force Public Relations Officer, CSP Anietie Okonko Iniedu, who outlined a series of operations carried out by the Nigeria Police Force National Cybercrime Centre.
According to the police, the investigation linked to MTN began after the telecom company reported the suspected unauthorised use of staff login credentials to tamper with its billing and payment platforms. Investigators said the suspects allegedly used the compromised access to credit airtime to selected mobile lines before converting the value into data bundles that were then spread across more than 2,000 prepaid numbers.
Police said the scheme is believed to have caused losses estimated at about ₦7.7 billion. MTN, however, was said to have recovered 2,931.79 terabytes of data valued at roughly ₦3.8 billion.
In a separate operation in Asaba, Delta State, the National Cybercrime Centre said it broke up a suspected international fraud ring and arrested six people accused of impersonating globally recognised personalities in a bid to defraud foreign victims. The police said the operation followed intelligence shared by the National Crime Agency through the British High Commission in Abuja.
The cybercrime centre also disclosed that, working alongside the City of London Police under Operation Seraphim, it arrested four suspects allegedly connected to a Telegram based cybercrime network. The group is accused of stealing and trading the personal and financial information of victims, most of them citizens of the United Kingdom.
In another case, three suspects were arrested over an alleged fake online investment platform presented as being connected to the Nigerian Exchange. Investigators said victims were believed to have lost about ₦29.8 million, with the funds traced to cryptocurrency wallets allegedly linked to the operators.
The police also confirmed the arrest of one suspect accused of circulating a manipulated video featuring social media personality Martins Vincent Otse, widely known as VeryDarkMan, with audio falsely attributed to President Bola Tinubu.
Another suspect was picked up over a viral Facebook post which allegedly claimed that nearly 1,000 Boko Haram members had been deployed to Abuja. Police said the claim was false and capable of triggering unnecessary fear and panic among the public.
Iniedu said nine principal suspects connected to the various investigations are still on the run, adding that efforts are ongoing to track them down and arrest others believed to be involved.
The police noted that all allegations remain under investigation and that those arrested are presumed innocent until proven guilty by a court of law.
