It was meant to be a one-night stand with a man she had met through a ‘hook-up’ app, but Angel (not real name) ended up spending eight days with a guy who gave his name as Frank at a hotel located in Kubwa, a suburb of Abuja.
Angel and Frank had arranged to meet physically at Soul Lounge nightclub, Kubwa, in late August, 2021.
But the meetup which ought to be for short casual sex landed Angel at the Kubwa Divisional Police Station after her ‘hook’, who turned out to be an alleged internet fraudster, wired N1.3 million from her account without her consent.
“We were supposed to stay one night, and he paid me 10k. He said he likes me and he wants me to stay with him for eight days and that he will give me 20k each day,” she told this reporter who bumped into her during a routine visit to the police station.
The reporter had found Angel within the premises of the police division seated alone under a tree and looking gloomy and staring at the ground.
She felt betrayed by her ‘hook’ who came across as a loving young man whom she thought had genuine interest in her.
Angel was cajoled by Frank’s flamboyance. The young man had bragged about fictional achievements, including owning a house in high-brow areas of the federal capital, having over 40 million in his accounts and strings of businesses.
Obviously, Frank’s alluring statements and promises convinced Angel to surrender herself to him.
She told our correspondent that she followed her ‘hook’ to Bchezz Hotel located opposite the Kubwa Central Market in Kubwa, where they did nothing but eat, sleep and kept each other’s company for eight days.
But Angel would later find out that her supposed new found love was taking care of her from money he had stolen from her.
According her, Frank wiped her entire savings of two years after removing a SIM card linked to her bank account from her phone and replaced it with another one.
“We lodged in a hotel opposite Central market (Kubwa), and there is a POS guy in front of the hotel. So, I don’t know what he was discussing with the POS guy the first day we went to the hotel.
“We were supposed to stay one night, and he paid me 10k. He said he likes me and he wants me to stay with him for eight days and that he will give me 20k each day. He even transferred 120k seven days ahead, and I said since he has paid me now maybe it is one of those guys.
“That time the SIM card was still with me, and as soon as I saw the alert, I deleted it. Then my account was over N1.3m. So, later we were going to buy something and anywhere he was going, he will always like me to follow him. I didn’t know that he was doing that so that I don’t suspect him.
“Whenever we get downstairs and to the front of the hotel gate, he will tell me to wait that he wants to see that POS guy; he will be talking, I don’t know what they are talking about. When it is time for the guy to give him the money, he will tell me to come.
“He will even give me some of the money to count and I will now be asking him, ‘what do you want to do with this money?’ He would say he wants to play Bet Naija and the POS guy will be laughing,” she said.
She said Frank sometimes withdrew N100,000 and other times N200,000 or N300,000 and would not explain the reason for the rapid cash withdrawals.
“That was how this guy kept withdrawing from my account, sending it to the POS guy’s personal account and I didn’t know that all the money he was spending was my money. He didn’t even buy me a single gown from that money,” she said holding her tears back.
To further spice her mini-vacation, Frank asked that Angel accompany him to Lokoja for a business trip which she agreed to.
“He was really taking good care of me. He bought me food always and ensured I was okay. The hotel we even stayed In Lokoja was cool too,” she said with a smile recalling a now-sour-moment of pleasure.
At a point, Angel became aware that Frank had her SIM. She explained that her small phone had two MTN SIMs and since Frank had apologized when she noticed a change in her SIMs, she felt it was safe because they were still together.
However, she did not suspect the activities on her account because Frank had discarded the battery of her nearly-damaged mobile phone, saying he would buy her an iPhone when they get to Abuja.
After a night in Lokoja, Angel said Frank became uneasy and at that point she sensed things were not alright and decided that she was leaving. He gave her N3,000 as transportation fare back to Abuja.
“When I asked him for my SIM, he told me to search the hotel we stayed in Abuja, but do you know when I came back and put a battery in that phone and called my line, this boy picked and told me that I have not seen anything?” she narrated.
Reality dawned on Angel when she realized that Frank had not only wiped N1.3m from her account, but later discovered that the N120,000 he earlier transferred into her account was ‘fake alert’.
All Angel eventually ‘gained’ was N13,000, she said.
She has now brought the matter to the police and the Kubwa divisional office is investigating the case.
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