Tobias Sylvester
The trial of musician Naira Marley for alleged credit card fraud opened on Wednesday before the Federal High Court in Lagos, with the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) tendering as exhibits an Apple laptop and an iPhone said to have been recovered from him.
Naira Marley, whose real name is Azeez Fashola, released a song with the title, Am I a Yahoo boy?
He is facing 11 counts before Justice Nicholas Oweibo.
KanyiDaily had reported that Naira Marley pleaded not guilty during his arraignment in May and was granted bail in the sum of N2m, with two sureties.
At the trial opening on Wednesday, an investigator with the EFCC, Nuru Buhari, said the anti-graft agency retrieved “damning evidence of credit card fraud from Naira Marley’s laptop.
Buhari, who told the court that he works in the EFCC forensic department, said an analysis of Naira Marley’s laptop showed that he frequented the top five most-visited websites which deal in buying and selling stolen credit cards.
Buhari, who was fielding questions from the prosecutor, Rotimi Oyedepo, said:
“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 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 investigator said his team also found a file named, Select BIN 101.txt and .txt., and on opening the file they discovered it contained “stolen credit card information with special status that allows transaction up to $12,000 without a pin or physical card.”
“For the note file, two major files were discovered named .txt, which contained about four credit card information, belonging to four different personalities in the UK, including one Nicole Louise,” he said.
“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 the 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 said analysis of installed apps on Naira Marley’s laptop showed that two them, IP VANISH and TOR Browser, enable the owner of the computer to disguise his identity and location. He said:
“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.”
Justice Nicholas Oweibo adjourned till Thursday for continuation of trial.
