A Lagos High Court in Ikeja has sentenced a bureau de change operator, Adewale Alausa, to seven years imprisonment for defrauding a company, IBW Bureau De Change of $35,000 (N5.6m).Justice Joseph Oyewole, in his judgment delivered on November 30, said, Alausa knowingly made false representation to the victim company and fraudulently obtained the sum $35,000 from it.The convict was said to have defrauded the company on May 23, 2008 in Ikeja, Lagos.He perpetrated the fraud by collecting the sum from a senior operative of the company, Mrs. Mercy Udoh, under the false pretence that he had a customer that would exchange the dollars for the equivalent of N4.165m.Justice Oyewole said, In the witness box, the defendant (Alausa) still failed to disclose details of his said customer. It is incredible that the defendant would give a total of $95,000 to an unknown person or to someone he did not know well.His inability to supply details of this supposed customer of his who had put him into so much trouble is because the customer does not exist.In totality therefore, I reject the testimony of the defendant tissues of lies meant to deceive the court and obscure the truth of this case.Alausa had told the court that, on the fateful day, his customer needed $95,000, part of which he claimed he had raised from other bureau de change outfits.He said it was the balance of $35,000 that he had collected from the victims company.Alausa was said to have promised to pay back the money into the companys account by 10am later in the day, the time which he claimed he would have collected the naira equivalent from the said customer.During trial, Alausa told the court that he could not fulfil the promise because the customer carted away the money.Though Udoh, who was the first prosecution witness, had testified that Alausa was well known to her as a colleague in the business, she added that, before the day of the incident, she had never given him dollars without taking from him the naira equivalent.The prosecution, led by Mr. K.O. Oni, told the court that after series of failed promises to pay back the money, Alausa changed his office and ran away with his wife.The convict was said to have also changed his phone number. But he was arrested later through the help of his friends who had his new telephone line.The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission on October 27, 2008, arraigned the convict on one count of obtaining money by false pretences.The offence, which the convict, had pleaded not guilty to, was said to be contrary to Section 1(3) of the Advance Fee Fraud and Other Related Offences Act No. 14 of 2006.
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