Several credit card numbers extracted from Naira Marley’s phone —Witness
An Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) forensic expert, Augustine Anosike, on Tuesday told the Federal High Court, Lagos, how the commission’s operatives extracted some credit card numbers from the phone of music star, Afeez Fashola aka Naira Marley.
The commission arrested Naira Marley and four others for alleged internet fraud and money laundering in May 2019.
He was arraigned on an 11-count charge of conspiracy, possession of counterfeit credit cards, and fraud on May 20, 2019, but pleaded not guilty to the charges.
Anosike, who is the second prosecution witness in the case, said the credit card numbers were extracted when the EFCC operatives were analyzing the contents of 2,410 messages found in the defendant’s phone.
He said Exhibit F was a conclusion of his analysis of Naira Marley’s iPhone X version 10.6, model A 1901, with number 07427343432 and an email, naimarley@icloud.com.
The detective gave the IMEI number of the iPhone as 35304509527532 and the SIM ICCID number as 8923420035948359826.
Anosike, who was cross-examined by the prosecution counsel, Rotimi Oyedepo, described Apple iPhone as a sophisticated device capable of storing a large volume of information.
He said: “It is the SIM card that basically identifies users of applications like WhatsApp. It means as long as a number has already been registered with a particular WhatsApp account, it matters less if such a user leaves the country.
“The chatting app used in the analysed device was WhatsApp. A total of 977 Short Message Service (SMS) and 1433 chat messages were discovered.
“We also discovered seven pending status update messages. On November 26, 2018, there was an outgoing message registered at 3:32 p.m., with a credit card number 5264711020433662.
“This message was sent to one Yadd. On December 11, 2018, there was an incoming message to the defendant’s device which read: ‘Your One Time Passcode (OTP) to verify your mobile number is 248716; wasn’t you, please call us on 63450808500.”
Justice Nicholas Oweibo adjourned the case till October 27.
