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Babatunde Oyebode popularly known as Baudex on IG,was arrested by the Special Fraud Unit (SFU) in Lagos, on Monday.They revealed that the suspected fraudster,was arrested for allegedly attempting to blackmail and swindle high profile businessmen and Nigerians.Among those he tried to defraud was popular billionaire,Femi Otedola.
Oyebode's victims submitted different petitions to the SFU, accusing him of fraudulently running a website, naijagistlive.com to send threat messages to people, demanding for huge sums of money to pull down negative stories about them or delete comments.
Now, initial investigation by LIB into the website, revealed that back in March 2016,
someone tried to expose Oyebode and his partner's fraudulent activities in the comment section of a post put up on the site
Oyebode, popularly known as Baudex on social media, in a video confession to the Police stated that he co-owns the website. He runs it with a lady, believed to be based outside Nigeria.
Email correspondence between him and his accomplice revealed that he was mainly responsible for upgrades on the site, to prevent it from being shut down by hackers. They conversed with one another about extorting their victims, revealing that Paypal and other means are used to receive whatever amount of cash they demand.
They also had conversations about receiving various payments, which victim had paid or not, and price plans for any removal. Huge sums of money have been paid by Nigerians to take down comments!
A particular conversation was highlighted, in which Oyebode and his accomplice spoke about one of the female victims, describing her in unpleasant terms and agreeing to put up a post about her. Incriminating voice notes were also found on his phone.
Also, Oyebode's girlfriend was in contact with his partner in crime through his account on Instagram after his arrest. Investigators initially had access to the account where chats between Oyebode's girlfriend and 9jagistlive were found, in which she revealed she just found out he had been arrested and wanted to know the next step. Suspecting that something was amiss, the password was quickly changed but the damage had already been done.The police is now out to arrest his girlfriend.
Oyebode was picked up by the Police during his third attempt to extort a businessman in Lagos. LIB can authoritatively confirm that after extorting thousands of dollars from the said business man, he continued to make attempts to blackmail and demand for more, saying that he had more stories to run. This was however how he met his waterloo, as he was arrested while trying to pick up the money paid into his Nigerian account.
Earlier,Oyebode had been arrested for trying to defraud billionaire Femi Otedola.Operatives of the Special Fraud Unit (SFU) in Lagos arrested the suspected fraudster,for allegedly attempting to swindle businessman Femi Otedola.
The Nation newspaper reported that Oyedepo, 23, was alleged to have sent threat and blackmail messages to the complainants and other high profile Nigerians through a website, naijagistlive.com, demanding huge sums of money.
Oyedepo, a resident of Sixth Avenue in Festac Town, was alleged to have posted a superimposed nude pictures of a lawyer on his website, alleging that she had been sleeping with her boss and other clients. According to the police, the suspect demanded N3.5million from the lawyer to remove the inappropriate picture from the site, which the victim could not afford.
A police officer who spoke on condition of anonymity said “The victim had allegedly told the suspect that she has no such money in her account and that the picture posted on the website had cost her, her job, her marriage and her social life. The lawyer is among the three different persons who petitioned the suspect.” Spokesman for SFU, Lawal Audu said the suspect has three different cases pending before the unit, adding that the first two involved fraud and threat to life.
According to Audu, on October 19th, one Dapo Balogun reported a case of extortion, black mail and threat to life against the suspect.
“The complainant claimed that the suspect had posted on naijagistlife a story alleging that he had worked with former Petroleum Minister, Deziani Allison-Maduekwe and that throughout the period he had fraudulently acquired huge sum of money. The complainant also claimed to have received a mail from the suspect, informing him that he should pay an undisclosed amount running into millions to enable him remove the provocative story from the site.
He alleged that since then he had been receiving threat messages from unknown callers demanding huge sum or risk being being kidnapped. The second complainant is Femi Otedola. He claimed that the suspect posted an annoying story on the same website accusing him of sleeping with different girls in his office. The suspect has another fraud case pending at the Federal High court.”
The suspect however denied being responsible for the actions, insisting that he was framed by the owners of the website which he only designed. The school dropout who claimed to be a website designer, said that he was contacted through email to design the website.
He said: “I design websites for people and after designing the site I will include my contacts in the website to attract other customers. I was arrested through my contact on naijagistlive.com.