Lukman Olabiyi
A forensic expert, Nuru Buhari, who is among the team that investigated popular music act, Azeez Fashola, popularly known as Naira Marley, over alleged fraud has revealed how the defendant operates.
Buhari, who is the first prosecution witness, yesterday informed the Federal High Court, Lagos that various stolen credit card information were retrieved from the musician’s laptop during their investigation.
The witness, who was led in evidence by the prosecutor, Rotimi Oyedepo, before Justice Nicholas Oweibo informed the court that apart from the stolen credit card information that were retrieved, the website visit history recovered from the device, showed that the top five most visited sites on the device dealt with buying and selling stolen credit card information.
In his revelation on the activities of the owner of the device which is Naira Marley, he said: “During analysis of the device, the cache file and history file revealed that the most frequently visited sites by the user of the computer includes arder007.org, Zuni.sa, nationwidecheckbalance.co.uk, ferunshop.netAMD cocoa.co.uk.
“And analysis of the websites as well revealed that web 1 is where stolen card information is being sold to intending fraudsters, web 2 is for stolen credit cards specifically for the UK, web 3 is an online website designed for UK card holders to check their balance wherever they are around the world, web 4 is a dark web meaning am underground tunnel in the internet where stolen credit card information are sold and traded, web 5 is an online shopping mall where members are given discounts for shopping from certain shops.”
He also informed the court that stolen credit card information with special status that allows transaction upto $12,000 without a pin or physical card was found in a file named select BIN 101.txt and .txt.
“For the note file, two major files were discovered named .txt which contained about four credit card information belonging to four different personalities in the UK including one Nicole Louise.
“The second file is named selected BIN101.txt containing Bank Identification Number of European, American and Latin American banks.
“When we ran the BIN code search for the first six digits of the cards, it revealed they are Visa cards issued by Barclay’s bank, Sandander UK plc.
“We identified that there are certain banks in US, Europe and Asia with certain peculiarities, these are banks that they issue credit cards without pins based on the high level of trust, they allow a transaction of up to $12,000 in a swipe on pos.
“Cards issued by those banks are card not requiring pin. All you need to execute a transaction is the card number and the CVV number.”
Buhari also informed the court that suspicious applications that are mostly used by people with shady deals on the internet were found on the musician laptop as well.
“We analysed installed applications on the laptop and we found two applications that enables the owner of the computer to deny the server’s bank chance of revealing his identity and location, IP VANISH and TOR browser,” he added.
In requesting for an adjournment for the purpose of cross examining the witness, Olalekan Ojo (SAN), counsel to the defendant, informed the court that most of the statements made by the witness were not in the documents provided by the prosecution and the defence was just hearing them for the first time and would need to closely review the statements before cross examining the witness.
Oweibo adjourned till tomorrow for cross-examination of the witness.
Fashola is being prosecuted by the EFCC on an 11-count charge of conspiracy, possession of counterfeit cards and fraud. His co-defendant, Yad Isril, is said to be at large.