Cyber Fraud: Naira Marley’s Laptop, iPhone Implicated Him, EFCC Tells Court

Nigerian musician, Azeez Fashola, popularly known as Naira Marley, was in court on Wednesday for commencement of his trial for alleged credit card fraud.

The ‘Am I a Yahoo boy?’ crooner appeared before the Federal High Court in Lagos where he is facing 11-count charge bordering on cyber fraud.

At Wednesday’s trial, the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) tendered an Apple laptop and iPhone recovered from the singer as exhibits against him.

Naira Marley, who appeared before Justice Nicholas Oweibo, had pleaded not guilty during his arraignment in May and was granted bail after meeting the bail condition of N2m and two sureties.

At the opening of his trial on Wednesday, an investigator with the EFCC, Nuru Buhari, said the anti-graft agency retrieved “damning evidence of credit card fraud from Naira Marley’s laptop.

The investigator told the court that he works in the forensic department of the EFCC and according to him, an analysis of Naira Marley’s laptop proves that he frequently visited five websites which deal in buying and selling stolen credit cards.

Buhari said, “During analysis, the cache file and history file revealed that the most frequently visited sites by the user of the computer includes arder007.org, Zuni.sa, nationwidecheckbalance.co.uk, ferunshop.net AMD cocoa.co.uk.

“Analysis of the websites revealed that web 1 is where stolen card information is being sold to intending fraudsters, web 2 is for stolen credit cards specifically for the UK, web 3 is an online website designed for UK cardholders to check their balance wherever they are around the world, web 4 is a dark web meaning an underground tunnel in the Internet where stolen credit card information are sold and traded, web 5 is an online shopping mall where members are given discounts for shopping from certain shops.”

According to Buhari, his team also found some files named “Select BIN 101.txt and .txt.” which contained “stolen credit card information with special status that allows transaction up to $12,000 without a pin or physical card.”

He further testified that, “For the note file, two major files were discovered named .txt, which contained about four credit card information, belonging to four different personalities in the UK, including one Nicole Louise.

“The second file is named selected BIN101.txt containing Bank Identification Number of European, American and Latin American banks.

“When we ran the BIN code search for the first six digits of the cards, it revealed they are Visa cards issued by Barclay’s bank, Sandander UK plc.

“We identified that certain banks in the US, Europe and Asia with certain peculiarities, these are banks that they issue credit cards without pins based on the high level of trust, they allow a transaction of up to $12,000 in a swipe on pos.

“Cards issued by those banks are card not required. All you need to execute a transaction is the card number and the CVV number”.

The EFCC investigator said when the installed applications were analysed, the apps on Naira Marley’s laptop showed that the IP VANISH and TOR Browser, makes it difficult to trace the identity and location of the user.

“The TOR Browser is sometimes called the Onion. Most of the criminals cover their tracks with various layers just like an onion using this app to make it near impossible for a tracker to track their location.

“The IP VANISH is a virtual private network, which provides that the actual computer and location of usage cannot be identified. It also gives the user the ability to change their location.”

The defence counsel, Olalekan Ojo SAN, however, told the court that most of the statements made by the witness are not in the documents provided by the prosecution and the defence is just hearing them for the first time and would need to closely review the statements before cross examining the witness.

The presiding Judge, Nicholas adjourned till Thursday for the continuation of the trial.