Babatunji Wusu –
Two college students were detained by the Lagos State Police Command for organizing a scheme to kidnap themselves in an attempt to demand money from their parents.
This information was revealed on Thursday by Benjamin Hundeyin, the state command’s spokesperson. He named the perpetrators as Ayodele Balogun, a 21-year-old student at Lagos State University (LASU), and Dennis Okuomo, a 21-year-old student at the National Institute of Information Technology (NIIT) in Lagos.
The accused demanded a $100,000 Bitcoin ransom from their grieving parents as part of an elaborate scam.
According to Hundeyin, Dennis Okuomo came up with the idea first to help his friend Ayodele—who comes from a low-income background—financially.
In order to carry out their plan, Ayodele disappeared from his house. Dennis then used Ayodele’s phone to call Ayodele’s father, Mr. Balogun, to announce the fictitious kidnapping and demand a $20,000 ransom, or around N30 million.
While Ayodele was hiding in Dennis’s room at his father’s hotel, the ransom was supposed to be paid in bitcoin to a wallet address supplied by the suspects. Driver Ayodele’s father was left in a condition of hopelessness and had no idea how to obtain the required sum.
Unexpectedly, Dennis also staged a kidnapping, but this time he demanded that his father pay a whooping $100,000 (about N150 million) in ransom. After that, the two sought sanctuary in a bush for five days in an attempt to coerce their relatives into paying the ransom.
However, they made the decision to go back to Dennis’s hotel room since their predicament in the bush became unbearable without a ransom money.
When they got back, they made up a tale about how they had escaped their captors bravely and told Ayodele’s father right once that they were free.
Then, Ayodele was brought to a hospital while being made to appear as though he had just been let free from a kidnapper’s lair.
The suspects are currently in police custody, according to a police spokesperson, and investigations have shown that the entire kidnapping was a hoax carried out by the students themselves.
“Perpetrators of self-kidnap,” as Hundeyin called them, highlighted the seriousness of their dishonest behavior.
The police, however, issued a warning against these fraudulent schemes, stressing the anxiety and suffering they bring to families as well as the needless divergence of law enforcement resources.
