The police have arrested a Lagos housewife, aged 26, and her accomplice, aged 30, for allegedly staging her own kidnapping and extorting N2.5 million from her husband.
Lagos State Police Command spokesperson, SP Abimbola Adebisi, confirmed the arrest in a statement issued on Saturday in Lagos.
Adebisi said the police received a distress call on November 24 from the woman’s husband through one of the command’s emergency lines, reporting that armed men had kidnapped his wife.
She said the caller reported that the alleged kidnappers demanded a ransom of N10 million, later reduced to N3 million, adding that after he paid N2.5 million, the woman was not released.
“Upon receipt of the complaint, the Command Special Squad immediately deployed human and technical assets to track the alleged kidnappers.
“The supposed victim was eventually released and reunited with her family,” Adebisi said.
According to her, during debriefing, the woman claimed she was abducted by six armed men in a silver Toyota Venza, taken to their hideout and dispossessed of her iPhone 12 Pro Max.
“She further claimed that the ransom paid by her husband was first credited into her bank account before being handed over to the kidnappers,” she said.
Adebisi said police investigations later uncovered inconsistencies in the account.
She said operatives apprehended the accomplice on December 3 in the Ede area of Osun State, adding that a SIM card used to register the WhatsApp account through which ransom negotiations were conducted was recovered from him.
“During interrogation, the accomplice confessed that the suspect requested the use of his SIM card to create the WhatsApp account used for the ransom negotiations.
“He admitted providing the one-time password (OTP) sent to his line, which enabled her to operate the account,” Adebisi said.
She said the woman was confronted with the findings and admitted to faking her own kidnapping to extort money from her husband, who lives in South Africa.
Adebisi added that further investigation led to the recovery of the iPhone 12 Pro Max, which the woman had earlier claimed was with the kidnappers.
“The phone was recovered from a 34-year-old man, who told investigators that he bought it from the suspect for N380,000 after being warned not to insert any SIM card into it,” she said.
She said investigations were ongoing and that the suspects would be charged to court at the conclusion of the investigation.
