19-year-old teenager sentenced to 12 months imprisonment for internet fraud

A 19-year-old male named Marvelous Awolowo, also known as Bryan Evan and Sandra Kate, was found guilty and given a 12-month prison sentence by Justice Adebayo Yusuf of the Kwara State High Court in Ilorin on Friday for offences touching on cybercrime.

Marvelous had been charged with two crimes by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission's Ilorin Zonal Command.

One of the counts read, “That you, Marvelous Awolowo sometime between May 2022 and October 2022 in Ilorin, Kwara State within the jurisdiction of this honourable court did knowingly had under your control N13,713,400 paid into your United Bank for Africa account No 2176465739 which is reasonably suspected to be unlawfully obtained and thereby committed an offence contrary to Section 319(A) of the Penal Code Law and punishable under the same Section.”

To the allegations that were read to him in court, he entered a guilty plea.

According to an EFCC statement signed by Head of Media and Publicity Wilson Uwajuren, after the defendant entered a guilty plea, the EFCC's attorney, Rashidat Alao, reviewed the case's facts using a witness named Kamal Yahayah who described the events leading to the defendant's detention.

The materials Kamal, an EFCC agent, presented were accepted as evidence by the court.

On October 23, 2022, at the International Airport in Ilorin, Kwara State, Marvelous, a native of the Kabba/Bunu Local Government Area of Kogi State, was detained on the basis of reliable intelligence.

One Infinix S5 Lite phone was found on him after his arrest. A number of bogus documents were printed from his emails once the phone was examined.

In her allocutus, Antonia Erinfolami-Daniel, the defence attorney, begged the court to exercise pity because the defendant was a young person with a bright future.

Marvelous was given a concurrent six-month sentence by Justice Yusuf on each of the two offences, with a N100,000 possible fine on each conviction.