A Kaduna State High Court has sentenced a mother, Oluwayemisi Samuel and her son, Joshua Samuel, to seven years each in prison over false allegation.
Justice A.A Bello sentenced the duo after finding them guilty of the one-count charge brought against them bordering on false information.
The convicts, were found to have actually squandered their N5.6 million on sport betting but later falsely wrote a petition to the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC, alleging that the money was fraudulently withdrawn from their Opay account.
They had claimed in the petition that an unknown individual had fraudulently withdrawn the money from their Opay account to a sport betting account without their authorisation.
The Kaduna Zonal Command of the EFCC, which investigated their petition had arraigned them before the court over the matter and slammed them with the one-count charge.
The EFCC’s separate counts read;
“That you, Oluwayemisi Samuel (F) and Hezekiah Samuel (now at large) sometime in March, 2023 in Kaduna State within the jurisdiction of the Honourable Court, committed an offence to wit; wilfully gave false information to the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, which information was used to carry out investigation on your complaint to the Commission, which information you knew to be false and thereby committed an offence contrary to Section 16(1) of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (Establishment) Act, 2004 and punishable under Section 16(2) of the same Act.
“That you, Joshua Samuel (M) and Hezekiah Samuel ( now at large) sometime in March, 2023 in Kaduna State within the jurisdiction of the Honourable Court, committed an offence to wit; wilfully gave false information to the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, which information was used to carry out investigation on your complaint to the Commission, which information you knew to false and thereby committed an offence contrary to Section 16(1) of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (Establishment) Act, 2004 and punishable under Section 16(2) of the same Act”.
The convicts had pleaded guilty to the charge when they were arraigned, following which the prosecution counsel, N. Salele, urged the court to convict them accordingly.
The judge, however, gave each of them an option to pay a fine of N150,000.
