Four Nigerian Students Arrested For Allegedly Hacking And Stealing Funds From Philippine Banks

Four Nigerian students have been arrested in Muntinlupa City, Philippine, for their alleged involvement in an international syndicate that hacks and siphons funds from banks.

The Philippines National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) who disclosed this in a statement on Tuesday, said the four Nigerians national were allegedly involved in hacking a Philippine bank where not less than $2,000 was stolen.

“The international syndicate is complicated.. to the point that they study the system’s flaws. Once they see a weakness, they will take advantage of that,” the statement reads.

The agency said the fraudsters’ transactions were traced when they hacked a system of one Philippine bank, where at least P100 million were transferred and funnelled into a different account.

One of the suspects’ Filipina girlfriend admitted to having used her account to deposit and withdraw money amounting to at least P2 million ($41,000), which was supposedly for tuition.

However, the accused Nigerians have denied the allegations during a chat with ABS CBN, The Nigerians said they were in the country to study they “know nothing about the hacking incident”.

“The funds withdrawn were donations from a Nigerian student community,” one of them said.

The Philippine NBI said the Nigerians violated the Access Device Law, Anti-Cybercrime law and falsification of public documents. Blank ATM cards and bank receipts were also recovered from the suspects.

This is coming two days after INTERPOL arrested two Nigerian suspects for alledgedly defrauding a Germany company of ‎€14.7 million in a COVID-19 related scam.