The trial of Azeez Fashola, a.k.a Naira Marley, kicked off today with the EFCC calling its first prosecution witness, Mr. Nuru Buhari, the head of EFCC’s Forensic Department. He was led in evidence by the prosecutor Barrister Rotimi Oyedepo.
Buhari told the court that some presumably stolen credit card details were retrieved from the musician’s laptop.
Apart from the stolen credit cards details, information on the visit history recovered from the laptop showed that the top five most visited sites dealt with buying and selling stolen credit card information.
Responding to questions from the prosecutor, Mr Rotimi Oyedepo, the witness said that during analysis, the cache file and history file revealed that the most frequently visited sites by the user of the computer included:
“arder007.org, Zuni.sa, nationwidecheckbalance.co.uk, ferunshop.net AMD cocoa.co.uk,”
According to him, analysis of the websites 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, whereas Web 3 is an online website designed for UK cardholders to check their balance wherever they are around the world.
“Web 4 is a dark web meaning an 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.”
The witness told the court that his team also found a file named, Select BIN 101.txt and .txt., and after opening the file they discovered it contained “stolen credit card information with special status that allows transaction up to 12,000 dollars without a pin or physical card.
“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, Santander UK plc,” he sajd.
“Cards issued by these banks are cards which do not require pins. All that is needed to execute a transaction is the card number and the CVV number. ”
He said that analysis of installed apps on Marley’s laptop showed that two of them, IP VANISH and TOR Browser, enabled the owner of the computer to disguise his identity and location. The apps are mostly used by people with shady deals on the internet were found on the laptop.
“The TOR Browser is sometimes called the Onion; most of the criminals cover their tracks with various layers just like an onion using this app to make it near impossible for a tracker to track their location.
“The IP VANISH is a virtual private network, which provides that the actual computer and location of usage cannot be identified. It also gives the user the ability to change their location.” he said ”
He also said an analysis of the administrator account on the laptop revealed that the admin is one Naira Marley and the account was connected to his iCloud account.
At the end of Mr Nuru’s evidence Mr Oyedepo tendered the request for the analysis of apple laptop mac book pro and an iPhone labelled by the court as exhibit A and B, a laptop mac book pro and an iPhone allegedly confiscated from the defendant which was admitted as exhibits.
However the defence counsel Mr. Olalekan Ojo SAN, told the court that most of the statements made by the witness are not in the documents provided by the prosecution and the defence is just hearing them for the first time and would need to closely review the statements before cross examining the witness.
According to the charge, the defendant allegedly committed the offences on different dates between Nov. 26, 2018, Dec.11, 2018, and May 10,
The charge alleges that Fashola and his accomplices conspired to use different Access Bank ATM Cards to defraud their victims.
It said that the defendant allegedly used Access Card number 5264711020433662 issued to another persons, in a bid to obtain fraudulent financial gains.
He was said to have possessed these counterfeit credit cards, belonging to different cardholders, with intent to defraud, which also amounted to theft.
The offences contravenes the provisions of Section 1, 23 (1) (b), 27 (1}, 33, 33(9) Cyber Crime (Prohibition) Prevention Act, 2015.
The presiding Judge, Nicholas Oweibo adjourned till tomorrow for the witness to be cross -examined and to continue the trial.