A major step towards countering cyber fraud by operatives from the Department of State Services (DSS) saw a 32 year old blogger arrested after being caught fabricating and spreading false recruitment information using a fake copy of the agency’s official web site.
Suspect, Sylvester Victor Augustus, apprehended on Thursday as a result of a well planned operation which led DSS operatives to arrest the suspect during a U.S Supreme Court operation at the suspect’s Akpan Eno Lane residence in Abak Local Government Area of the Akwa Ibom State, now being held. Augustus, who claims to be an alumnus of the University of Uyo (UNIUYO), has been a blogger and content writer.
Augustus placed a copy of the DSS website online in such a way that it would show an advert for a job that initially would seem to target unsuspecting members of the public, ‘a person familiar with the investigation disclosed to us’.
The illegal con was aimed at job seekers working, in particular, at the labor market for high level security agency jobs. The DSS, which is always on duty to prevent its citizens from falling for deceitful messages, has also given notice publicly in the past that it published fake recruitment advertisement.
The same agency easily tagged the post as “fake” and urged people not only for not taking protective measures but also for being lulls for Deception strategies.
Detention is mentioned as one of the turning points in the battle against the increasing number of increasingly sophisticated online recruitment scams in recent years.
However, historically in each of these offenses, any inappropriate behaviour whether it is a risk to an individual victim directly or indirectly, does not only carry the risk to the safety of those victims but also carries the risk to reputation of the responsible public agencies.
Prosecutions against the ruler Augustus are anticipated shortly, as they are currently compiling the evidence needed to bring him to justice. This case is a harsh lesson to other aspiring cyber terrorists and it has reinforced the DSS’s stance on guaranteeing the security and reliability of its recruitment procedures.
But on the other hand, this experience also highlights the need to verify the information from the government agencies and it is also time to look at such scams with suspicion still being practised and unnecessarily causing agony to a lot of gullible job seekers all over the country.
