An employee of the Nigerian Security Printing and Minting Company, Osakpolo Igbinosa, has been arrested by the Lagos State Police Command for allegedly being in possession of fake N900, 000.
The father of three said the fake money was among those that were yet to reach the final stage of printing by the NSPMC.
The suspect, a material security officer, said he had been perpetrating the criminal act since 2010 until he was recently arrested by the police in Ikorodu.
The Edo State indigene said he had gone to a bureau de change operator to convert the counterfeit money to dollars when one of the operators, Abdulrahman Abdullahi, raised the alarm and alerted the police.
“The notes are not fake per se, but the difference is that, they have not reached final state of production and so there are no serial numbers on them. I did not print them contrary to what I am being accused of. The notes are genuine ones and were printed by the company but I stole them because I needed to offset some debt,” he said.
The spokesperson for the state police command, Ngozi Braide, said the suspect was arrested on September 19, 2012.
She said, “One Abdulraham Abdullahi of Benson Plaza Ikorodu alerted policemen on Shagamu Road that the suspect, with staff number MSC. /4503 transacted a business of exchange of N900, 000 for $3,000. During the transaction, the said N900, 000 was discovered to be fake because the notes did not have security and minting numbers.
“The suspect was promptly arrested by the police and during interrogation, he confessed being a security man attached to the NSPMC and that he stole money.
“He further stated that he had been stealing the counterfeit money since 2010 and bought a Nissan Pathfinder with number plate KRD 480AE from the illegal business. He even attempted to bribe the police with N300, 000 when they came to arrest him.”
Braide said the bribe money was also being held as an exhibit and that the suspect would soon be charged to court.
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