Witness affirms stolen credit cards information retrieved from Naira Marley’s laptop

A prosecution witness in the alleged fraud case involving popular musician, Azeez Fashola, popularly known as Naira Marley on Wednesday informed a Federal High Court, Ikoyi, Lagos that various stolen credit cards information were retrieved from the musician’s laptop.

The witness, Nuru Buhari, head of the forensic department at the Lagos zonal office of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) told Justice Nicholas Oweibo, that apart from the stolen credit cards information, website visits history recovered from the device showed that the top five most visited sites dealt with buying and selling stolen credit cards information.

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“During analysis, the cache file and history file revealed that the most frequently visited sites by the user of the computer includes arder007.org, Zuni.sa, nationwidecheckbalance.co.uk, ferunshop.net AMD cocoa.co.uk.”

“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, web 3 is an online website designed for UK card holders to check their balance wherever they are around the world, web 4 is a dark web meaning am 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 added.

He also informed the court while being led by EFCC counsel, Rotimi Oyedepo that stolen credit card information with special status that allows transaction upto $12, 000 without a pin or physical card was found in a file named select BIN 101.txt and .txt.

“For the note file, two major files were discovered named .txt which contained about four credit cards information belonging to four different personalities in the UK, including one Nicole Louise.

“The second file is named selected BIN101.txt containing bank identification number of European, American and Latin American banks.

“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, Sandander UK plc.

“We identified that certain banks in US, Europe and Asia with certain peculiarities; these are banks that they issue credit cards without pins based on the high level of trust, they allow a transaction of up to $12, 000 in a swipe on pos.

“Cards issued by those banks are card not required. All you need to execute a transaction is the card number and the CVV number,” Buhari further revealed.

Also, the witness informed the court that suspicious apps that are mostly used by people with shady deals on the internet were found on the laptop.

“We analysed installed apps on the laptop and we found two apps that enables the owner of the computer to decide the server of a bank as to his identity and location, IP VANISH and TOR browser.

“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 (VPN) which provides that the actual computer and location of usage cannot be identified. It also gives the user the ability to change their location,” the EFCC official stated.

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.

During the course of the examination in chief, 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 labelled exhibit C and D and the forensic laboratory report prepared by Buhari labelled exhibit E.

In requesting for an adjournment for the purpose of cross-examining the witness, Olalekan Ojo, counsel to the defendant informed 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.

Justice Oweibo has adjourned till October 24 for cross- examination of the witness.