A man identified as Chimezie Chuta has been arraigned in court by the The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, (EFCC) Lagos Zonal office yesterday. He appeared before Justice Mojisola Dada of the State High Court sitting in Ikeja, Lagos.
Chimezie was a former employee in the publishing unit of Dominion Book Stores, an online book store belonging to The Living Faith Church Worldwide and was charged on one-count bordering on stealing to the tune of $56,000.
The suspect was accused of hacking into the company’s mail and diverted payments for some goods bought by online customers, into his personal account.
The defendant, who was said to have been an active member of the Living Faith Church Worldwide for six years, sometime in 2013, proposed to the church to build an online digital media store that would showcase all of Bishop David Oyedepo’s books and audio messages online, to enable members of the church in the Diaspora to buy them and also receive digital copies.
Before then the publishing firm had only been selling off their material offline, which the defendant claimed would limit the sales as the company could target more customers in different parts of the world by going digital.
Investigation revealed that the project was approved by the Church absolutely free of charge on contract basis. It was further revealed that the defendant handed over all the relevant materials to the ICT department of the church after his contract expired with the publishing firm
However, the defendant was alleged to have later gone behind to hack into the computer server of the church to replace the church’s account details with his and then divert funds to the tune of $56,000 into his personal account. When the charge was read to the defendant, he pleaded not guilty.
Justice Dada adjourned the case to March 7, 2018 for hearing of bail application and commencement of the trial.
