Ex-Banker Gets 10 Years Jail-Term For Stealing, Forgery
A Tinubu Chief Magistrate Court, Lagos has convicted and sentenced a former bank worker, Samuel Dare Arayode, to 10 years imprisonment for stealing and forgery.
The Court presided over by Magistrate Adeola M. Olumide-Fusika awarded the jail terms on Arayode for stealing the sum of N540, 000 belonging to his employer and forging a Lagos State Polytechnic (Laspotech) Higher National Diploma (HND) certificate.
Magistrate Olumide-Fusika, found Arayode guilty of all three counts and sentenced him to 18 months on count one for forgery, seven years on count two for stealing and 18 months for conspiracy on count three.
The Magistrate also ordered the convict to refund the stolen money to the bank with interest, while adding that the sentence would run concurrently, meaning Arayode would only spend a maximum of seven years in jail.
The judgment followed a seven-year trial before two magistrates.
The Maroko Division of the Nigeria Police, which arrested him, the convict secured the job with the bank’s Ikota, Lagos branch using the certificate he forged in 2010.
Arayode, now 28, was said to have committed the offences in 2014 when he was 20 years old.
He was arraigned on a charge marked L/125/2014 on August 26, 2014, before Senior Magistrate A.T. Omoyele of the same court.
The charge reads in part, “That you, Arayode Samuel, and others now at large, sometime in August 2014, during work hours, did conspire to steal the sum of N540,000 property of the bank.
“That you, Arayode Samuel, on September 20, 2010, during work hours at the Lagos State Polytechnic Ikorodu did forge a Lagos State Polytechnic Higher National Diploma Certificate with Reference No: Reg/Acad/083 bearing Arayode Dare Samuel, dated September 20, 2010.”
The prosecutor, Ben Ekundayo, said the offences contravened sections 409, 285 (7) and 363 (1) of the Criminal Law of Lagos State, 2015.
The defendant pleaded not guilty, following which he was granted bail in the sum of N200,000 with two sureties in the like sum.
The case was subsequently transferred to Mrs. Olumide-Fusika before whom Arayode was re-arraigned.
He repeated his plea and the trial resumed.
During his trial, the Police called witnesses who testified that sometime in 2014 Arayode’s employer audited the bank’s books and discovered that he had converted money customers gave him to lodge in their accounts to his personal use.
The bank probed further and found that the HND certificate Arayode secured the job with was fake.
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