Alleged N260 Fraud: EFCC Presents First Witness Against Cast Oil and Gas MD, Amusan

The trial of Olatunji Amusan, Managing Director, Cast Oil and Gas, for an alleged N260 million fraud, continued on Wednesday, December 2, 2020...

...before Justice Oluwatoyin Taiwo of the Special Offences Court sitting in Ikeja, Lagos with the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC, presenting its first witness, Hycenth Obinna, an investigator with the Commission.
Amusan, who was first arraigned alongside his company in November 2019, is standing trial for allegedly defrauding Nkasi Onyung, Managing Director, Energy Limited.
During today’s proceedings, the witness narrated how Onyung had approached the Commission after she was defrauded by Amusan.
The petitioner alleged that her company had issued the sum of N260 million to Amusan's company for the purchase of 3, 250litres of diesel (AGO), which was never delivered.
Led in evidence by Chikezie Edozie, Obinna told the Court that Onyung petitioned the EFCC accusing Amusan of the fraud.

He said: "In the course of investigation, we discovered that the defendant had several other cases with the Commission.
"We also found out that he was about to take off from the country.

"So, I visited the office of the defendant in Victoria Island, Lagos along with a colleague in my Team and arrested him.

"We brought him to our office, where we read the petition to him.
“He confessed that he was aware of the transaction in question.

"We then took his statement under caution after we had interviewed him.

“He stated that everything in the statement was true."
Testifying further, Obinna told the Court that letters were written to Fidelity Bank for the bank statements of the petitioner and the defendant, as the transactions were carried out through the bank.
He stated that forensic analysis confirmed that the sum of N240 million was, indeed, released for the transaction, but the defendant, rather than use it to supply the product requested, moved the money to his own account.
"He told us that he used the money as an equity," Obinna said.

According to the witness, Amusan later promised to pay back the money.
He said: "He brought back the first N100 million, which was later released to the complainant; then, another N60 million, which was also registered in the exhibit register and released on bond to the complainant;...
...and then another N5 million, totalling N165 million out of the N260 million.

"After that, he jumped bail, till another team investigating another case arrested him for other alleged fraud.
"That was when we took him up again and charged him with fraud, as all the promises to pay back did not yield anything."

The case was adjourned till January 20, 2021.

More from EFCC Nigeria

More from Crime

My students @maxzks and Tushar Jois spent most of the summer going through every piece of public documentation, forensics report, and legal document we could find to figure out how police were “breaking phone encryption”. 1/


This was prompted by a claim from someone knowledgeable, who claimed that forensics companies no longer had the ability to break the Apple Secure Enclave Processor, which would make it very hard to crack the password of a locked, recent iPhone. 2/

We wrote an enormous report about what we found, which we’ll release after the holidays. The TL;DR is kind of depressing:

Authorities don’t need to break phone encryption in most cases, because modern phone encryption sort of sucks. 3/

I’ll focus on Apple here but Android is very similar. The top-level is that, to break encryption on an Apple phone you need to get the encryption keys. Since these are derived from the user’s passcode, you either need to guess that — or you need the user to have entered it. 4/

Guessing the password is hard on recent iPhones because there’s (at most) a 10-guess limit enforced by the Secure Enclave Processor (SEP). There’s good evidence that at one point in 2018 a company called GrayKey had a SEP exploit that did this for the X. See photo. 5/
Ok so there’s a conspiracy theory going around that this woman was faking her injury with an onion.

This is likely false. Onions are a folk remedy for pepper spray.


The theory, which has some merit, is that since onions make you cry, it helps flush the irritants from your eyes with natural tears.

However, this is not recommended as a treatment for pepper spray and is ultimately not very effective.

Pepper spray, tear gas, mace, CN, HC, and other agents are best removed with a flush of water or, if you have the proper mixture, saline. Nothing else.

We do not do chemistry in our eyeballs. We are not putting chemicals in our eyes. We are not putting produce in our eyes. We are removing the chemicals with safe, neutral water.
This is terrible weighing of the costs and benefits of the pardon power. I think Senator Murphy woefully undervalues its utility. /1


In part because the Congress of which he is a part has established no functioning second-look mechanisms for shortening sentences or expunging convictions, commutations and pardons are the only mechanisms for correcting injustices in the federal system. /2

And it's not as if those injustices are rare. Go to any federal correctional facility, and take time to learn who is there and about their cases, and you find literally thousands of people whose sentences were grossly excessive given their offenses. /3

Those people need commutations as a corrective because there is no parole or other second look in place to address that. Some have tried to use compassionate release under the First Step Act, but DOJ tries to block those efforts at every turn and it's a limited option. /4

Presidential commutations are thus the only avenue for these folks. And under President Obama, more than 1,700 regular people (not his cronies) received relief. It was woefully inadequate for the need, but it shows the value of the power. /5

You May Also Like

These 10 threads will teach you more than reading 100 books

Five billionaires share their top lessons on startups, life and entrepreneurship (1/10)


10 competitive advantages that will trump talent (2/10)


Some harsh truths you probably don’t want to hear (3/10)


10 significant lies you’re told about the world (4/10)
The first ever world map was sketched thousands of years ago by Indian saint
“Ramanujacharya” who simply translated the following verse from Mahabharat and gave the world its real face

In Mahabharat,it is described how 'Maharishi Ved Vyasa' gave away his divine vision to Sanjay


Dhritarashtra's charioteer so that he could describe him the events of the upcoming war.

But, even before questions of war could begin, Dhritarashtra asked him to describe how the world looks like from space.

This is how he described the face of the world:

सुदर्शनं प्रवक्ष्यामि द्वीपं तु कुरुनन्दन। परिमण्डलो महाराज द्वीपोऽसौ चक्रसंस्थितः॥
यथा हि पुरुषः पश्येदादर्शे मुखमात्मनः। एवं सुदर्शनद्वीपो दृश्यते चन्द्रमण्डले॥ द्विरंशे पिप्पलस्तत्र द्विरंशे च शशो महान्।

—वेद व्यास, भीष्म पर्व, महाभारत


Meaning:-

हे कुरुनन्दन ! सुदर्शन नामक यह द्वीप चक्र की भाँति गोलाकार स्थित है, जैसे पुरुष दर्पण में अपना मुख देखता है, उसी प्रकार यह द्वीप चन्द्रमण्डल में दिखायी देता है। इसके दो अंशो मे पीपल और दो अंशो मे विशाल शश (खरगोश) दिखायी देता है।


Meaning: "Just like a man sees his face in the mirror, so does the Earth appears in the Universe. In the first part you see leaves of the Peepal Tree, and in the next part you see a Rabbit."

Based on this shloka, Saint Ramanujacharya sketched out the map, but the world laughed