I Beheaded My Friend Because Of N13m In His Account — Suspect

If 29-year-old Abuchi Wisdom Nwachukwu, had known that informing his friend and colleague, Moses Moses, that his elder brother based in South Africa sent him N13million to complete his building construction project would cost him his life, he would have kept his mouth sealed.

The Isiala-Mbano, born victim was hacked to death and his head cut off on 7th January 2020, by his friend, during a night shift duty at the table water company where both of them worked in Auchi area of Edo State. After killing him, Moses cut off Nwachukwu’s lifeless body so that it would not be recognized before dumping the body in a bush close to the company.

He then took the victim’s phone and the ATM card to some internet fraudsters based in Auchi who withdrew N2.2million from Nwachukwu’s account, while he went on make further withdrawals from POS in various points in Edo State.

Meanwhile, Nwachukwu’s headless body was found by the police in Auchi, who could not identify him and took it to the mortuary. Nwachukwu’s relatives in Imo State and his brother in South Africa therefore became very worried over his sudden disappearance with his phone lines switched off.

His brother was said to have written a petition to the Inspector General of Police, Adamu Mohammed after some months of his disappearance while operatives of the Intelligence Response Team, IRT, headed by Deputy Commissioner of Police, Abba Kyari, were directed to carry out an investigation.

It was gathered that, weeks into their investigation, the IRT operatives were able to trace all POS transactions Moses did with Nwachukwu’s ATM cards, in Benin, Ore, and Auchi areas of Edo State before they finally arrested him in a hotel where he was hiding in Auchi.

During his interrogation, he confessed to the crime and led the operatives in arresting his other accomplices; Yusuf Sagiru, Tony Bright, Terence Okochukwu and a businessman Jahswill Ogbonnaya, who assisted him in withdrawing a total sum of N6million from the account.

When Saturday Vanguard interviewed Moses, the 27-year-old suspect, a native of Auchi, said his friend’s ghost had been haunting him from the day he killed him.

The Auchi Polytechnic Mechanical Engineering graduate said; “I’ve been working in a table water company in Abely area of Auchi in the last four years and when Nwachukwu got a job in the factory I was the person who taught him how to operate his machine, we then became very close friends.

“While we were working Nwachukwu told me about his brother who lived in South Africa and how he had been sending money to build his house for him.

“He showed me an alert of N13m which his brother just sent to him and told me that he would be travelling to his village to carry out the project.

“I then decided to get rid of him in order to steal the money. Since we were friends, I tricked him to get the password for his phone, went through it, and found his ATM card pin. Few days before he was to travel, we worked on the same shift, and I lured him outside the company, stabbed him with a knife, and killed him.

“I dragged his body into the bush and because I didn’t want people to recognize him easily, I cut off his neck and buried it. Then I took his ATM to one internet hacker, Yusuf, and told him that I needed to hack the account. N2.2million was then withdrawn from the account. I killed my friend on 8th January, 2020 and travelled to Ore and Benin City.

“I stayed in several hotels, sleeping with several women but my late friend’s ghost was always disturbing me. Whenever I wanted to sleep, his ghost would appear to me and I would be crying and the girls I had with me would run away saying I wanted to use them for money ritual. I now regret my action”, he lamented

In his own confession, 29-year-old Godswill Uche Ogbonaya, a native of Aro-Chukwu area of Abia State and a graduate of computer science from University of Uyo, narrated how he hacked into Nwachukwu’s account.

He said, “I am a trader, I sell electrical materials in Aba, I was arrested because some friends brought an ATM card, asking me to withdraw money from the card.

“I had a payment application known as paystack.com which I have been using to do my business. Most of my customers used the application to buy and sell their goods. I used the card to make a purchase and the authentication number to credit my paystack wallet.

“I took just one million from it but they requested that the money should be sent to an account of a bureau de change because they didn’t want any trouble.

“So, I contacted my friend living in Lagos who got an Alhaji to provide his account. The Alhaji took N400,000 as commission and the remaining N600,000 was sent to their account through one Bright Tony.

“I’ve been paying the money into their accounts and I already remitted N480,00 to other parties. It was on July 3, 2020 that I was arrested.

“Tony called me that he wanted me to do another transaction but I didn’t know that he was with the police and when I showed up, the police arrested me.”