Thousands of Nigerians have been defrauded by fraudsters who used the name and image of Governor Ben Ayade of Cross River State to swindle unsuspecting persons. The fraudsters extort money and dupe their victims to the tune of several millions of naira.
Already, many have fallen victims to these fraudsters. Most of the victims according to DAILY POST investigation are unemployed youths who have lost thousands of naira to the group.
The group according investigations cloned Governor Ayade’s photographs taken at various social functions in the State and other materials to perpetuate the evil acts.
It was gathered that the group, acting on the aegis of “PDP Ayade Team,” lures unsuspecting members of the public to join the team. “Besides luring unsuspected Nigerians, the group also extorted money estimated at million of naira from their victims” a source told DAILY POST.
A victim who simply gave his names as Inyang Asukwo Etim, an unemployed said that some persons approached him with the idea of joining the group and counted several goodies that will come from it including automatic employment and other things.
“At the end, money was estimated at thousands of naira was extorted from him” he lamented. He explained “after completed the enrolment, tendered photo copy of my credentials with a view of getting juices employment and other things, they demanded and collected N20, 000 from me”
“In fact, they make it so enticing that you must believe them. After waiting for a while, nothing seems coming, it done on me that these guys have duped me,” he lamented
He explained that several hundreds of people have been duped, appealing to government to get the fraudsters arrested, if not many negative things will happened to innocent Nigerians.
When contacted on the issue, the Senior Special Assistant/Chief Press Secretary to the Governor, Ben Ayade, Mr Christian Ita confirmed the incident to our correspondent and lamented that the fraudsters used Governor Ayade’s name to conduct recruitment.
“Actually, our attention has been drawn to online scammers purporting to be recruiting, canvassing and soliciting membership for a phony platform called. “PDP Ayade Team” he pointed out. Mr Ita said, “the group used cloned photograph of His Excellency on different social media platforms and luring unsuspecting members of the public to join the team”.
“These fraudsters, operating under various pseudo-names have been requesting registration fees from their unsuspecting victims to be registered as members of the “PDP Ayade Team”.
According to the Media aide of the Governor, Prof Ben Ayade does not know anything about PDP Ayade Team, “For the records, we do not know anything about “PDP Ayade Team” and we have nothing, whatsoever, to do with it”
He said while government acknowledges the existence of a platform called “Team Ayade”, which is a forum aimed at rallying support for the Governor’s policies and programmes, “We wish to, however, state that no fees or remittances are required to join the platform, as membership is voluntary and free.”
The CPS, however, warned the general public to be on the watchout for theses online predators whose singular aim is to fleece their unsuspecting victims, under different guises.
Comments