The Nigeria Customs Service (NCS) has engaged the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) to investigate some bank accounts with NCS’ name by individuals to defraud the public.
The Public Relations Officer of Customs, Mr Wale Adeniyi, announced this in an interview with newsmen on Wednesday in Abuja.
He said it was high level crime for anybody to invite people online and ask them to pay money into a specified bank account for job offers in customs.
The Nigeria Customs Service (NCS) has engaged the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) to investigate some bank accounts with NCS’ name by individuals to defraud the public.
The Public Relations Officer of Customs, Mr Wale Adeniyi, announced this in an interview with newsmen on Wednesday in Abuja.
He said it was high level crime for anybody to invite people online and ask them to pay money into a specified bank account for job offers in customs.
Confirming the development, he said : “We have involved the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) to investigate this crime and to expose those at the root of it.
“We don’t understand how and why a bank will open an account for any individual, using the Nigeria Customs Service account name.
“We are expecting the outcome of the investigation of the EFCC on this and as soon as the investigation is completed, we will let Nigerians know,’’ Adeniyi said.
He said that it was worrisome to notice how hackers and fraudsters were using the name of the service to defraud Nigerians.
“This issue is becoming prevalent and we are made to understand that it is the level of depression of Nigerians looking for jobs.
Adeniyi said that the NCS was not conducting any recruitment via the online platform, adding that the fraudsters used a platform to send interview invitation to people.
According to him, the official website of NCS is “www.customs.org.ng’’, adding that any other related website to the official one that was not on the “.org.ng domain’’ was fake.
“We’ve had experiences in the past when people cloned our website or out rightly opened an NCS website, some even opened facebook accounts; these are all attempts to defraud Nigerians.
“These hackers invite people online and ask them to pay money into specified bank accounts.
“We want to categorically inform Nigerians that the NCS does not recruit that way and we don’t ask people to pay for forms or pay for application,’’ he said.
“We have been able to lay our hands on some of such fraudsters; some of the cases are in court and some of the people are on the run.
“We have involved the EFCC because, more often than not, these border on financial crimes.
“I still need to emphasise and urge Nigerians to disregard any offer of customs employment or auction on these social platforms; they are all fake.’’
On the issue of defaulting rice importers, he said that the case was still ongoing and the service had not changed its position that the importers would be required to pay.
“Our position has not changed and our sanction is still on; we are not allowing them to discharge anything further and we are not allowing them to transact business through the ASSUDA system.
“We are going to make them to pay and we also believe that this will be the position of the present government,’’ Adeniyi said.
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