The Nigerian Army has raised the alarm over the activities of “fraudsters” operating fake social media accounts with the identities of senior military officers to deceive and defraud unsuspecting Nigerians.
In a disclaimer issued on Saturday, the army said the impersonators were operating fraudulent Facebook accounts bearing the name of the Deputy Chief of Standards and Evaluation (Army), Terungwa Utsaha, while using the photograph of the Chief of Policy and Plans (Army), Bamidele Alabi, to lend credibility to the scam.
A collation of screenshots released by the Army
The army attached screenshots of chats the fraudsters had with some Nigerians seeking to join the army. In one of the screenshots, the account operators instructed a job seeker—whose previous attempts to enlist in the military had apparently failed — to contact an officer identified as Mike to purchase a “replacement form.”
A Facebook search by PREMIUM TIMES shows that there are six accounts created in Mr Utsaha’s name, and all of them carried the same picture of Mr Alabi, whom the army identified as Chief of Policy and Plans.
