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Wednesday, December 8, 2010

EFCC recovers N26.4b from cyber criminals - independentngonline.com - 07 Dec 2010

The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) has declared that it has intercepted 12, 000 scam mails and recovered over £110 million (N26.4 billion) from cyber criminals in the last three years.


The declaration was made at the just concluded West African Cybercrime Summit in Abuja, where a Principal Staff Officer in the EFCC, Barrister Bala Sanga, said the agency with its foreign collaborators had also stopped over 3,870 scam mails emanating from Nigeria and out of it in the last eight months.


Sanga said that cyber criminals are leaving the shore of the country to its West African neighbours as a result of the determined fight the anti-graft agency is giving them.


He said the EFCC has secured over 300 convictions of cyber criminals since its inception, adding that more would be convicted after the cybercrime law is passed by the country’s law makers.

He regretted that cybercrimes are now spreading from Nigeria to other neighbouring West African countries.

He therefore urged governments of these West African countries to rise to the challenge and take drastic measures to curtail the growing ugly trend.

The EFCC had said Nigeria is now ranked third among the top 10 sources of cyber crime in the world just as it said over $557million was lost globally to cyber criminals in 2009.

The commission’s chairman, Mrs Farida Waziri, said after the United States of America with 65 per cent of cyber criminal activities and the United Kingdom with 9.9 per cent, Nigeria is the next hub of cyber criminals in the world with 8 percent.

By Ajibola Abayomi

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