Justice Mojisola Dada of the Special Offences Court sitting in Ikeja, Lagos state on Friday, June 9 convicted and sentenced one Kayode Adegbaju, an en
Justice Mojisola Dada of the Special Offences Court sitting in Ikeja, Lagos state on Friday, June 9 convicted and sentenced one Kayode Adegbaju, an engineer to 11 years imprisonment for committing a fraud of N61.1m fraud.
Engineer Adegbaju, was arraigned with his company, Warewater Limited, by the Lagos Zonal Command of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC, sometime in 2020 on a five-count charge relating to stealing, conspiracy to commit felony and issuance of dud cheques to the tune of N61, 160,000.
During the proceeding, the prosecution counsel, Fadeke Giwa, invited a witness, an operative of the EFCC, who was involved in the investigation of the alleged fraud.
This was sequel to a petition filed on behalf of the victim of the fraud, one Alhaji Usman Abiodun who is now deceased and an associate of Harafat Intergrated Service Limited, who accused the defendants of defrauding him of the said amount.
The court admitted in exhibits the several documentary evidence presented by the prosecution against the defendants,
These include the death certificate of the victim, who died in May 2018 at the age of 50.
Further investigation on the matter indicated that the defendant had contacted his late victim to finance a construction project which was awarded to him by a company. In the process, the victim provided him the sum of N89, 160,000.
But, after the execution of the said project awarded to the defendant for which awarding company confirmed paying him fully, the defendant only succeeded in paying back only N28 million to his victim, without the balance of the sum of N61,160,000.
The defendant, instead of paying up the balance, only issued three cheques to the tune of N10m each in the name of his company, which were returned unpaid for insufficient funds when presented at the bank by his victim.
Following his lack of satisfaction on the outcome of the deal, the victim subsequently petitioned the EFCC to wade into the matter.
The defendant, led in evidence by his counsel, M. Mofunaya, took to the dock to defend himself, denying all the allegations.
He had also claimed that the said dud cheques were signed under duress.
In his judgement, Justice Dada held that the prosecution proved all the counts against the defendant.
The trial Judge equally noted that the defendant, who opened several bank accounts in the name of his company, “had a sinister motive”, and merely used the company as “a vehicle to commit fraud”.
The judge, after considering circumstances surrounding the matter also held that the victim “was sent to his early grave.”
Justice Dada, therefore, found the defendant and him and his company guilty on all counts, and sentenced him to two years on count one bordering on stealing, three years on count two bordering on conspiracy, and two years each on counts three to five bordering on issuance of dud cheques.
The judge maintained that the accused sentences are to run concurrently.
The company was fined N500,000 on count one, and N500,000 each on counts three to five.
The defendant was also ordered to pay the outstanding amount of N61,160,000 within three months of the judgement to the victim or his dependents.
