Dear Sergeant Adebisi of Ajiwe Ajah Police Station, please do your job

Dear Sergeant Adebisi,

I am writing to you to appeal to your good nature, your sense of duty, and your commitment as a police officer to public service to rise to the challenge of doing your job.

On the night of the 23^rd of May 2017, my sister and brother-in-law were burgled, or to use an Americanism, they were burglarized by armed robbers. My brother-in-law in the encounter received head wounds that needed immediate hospital treatment and amongst the things stolen were electronic goods, phones and wallets containing bank cards. I reference the crime in the link below:

Appeal: My sister and her husband are being terrorised by an armed robber gang

This would have been the standard-issue armed robbery in Nigeria that rarely takes up police resources, but we have something to work on here. In the morning of the 24^th of May 2017, between 5:57 AM and 7:47 AM, 5 money transactions were made from my brother-in-law’s account with the Guaranty Trust Bank (GT Bank) to a recipient account with the Fidelity Bank; that recipient account belonged to Izuka Chukwuemeka Onyema.

This is where your duty as a policeman begins to matter to matter to Nigerians along with the training you received and the experience that has elevated you to the rank of sergeant with the opportunity for more laurels.

• Who is Izuka Chukwuemeka Onyema?
• How did Izuka Chukwuemeka Onyema’s account come to be the recipient of unauthorised fund transfers a few hours after an armed robbery?
• Could Izuka Chukwuemeka Onyema be in cahoots with the armed robbers or is he under duress to have his account used for laundering proceeds of crime?
• Why is Izuka Chukwuemeka Onyema not being apprehended for questioning, maybe interrogation and possibly held for conspiracy in committing an armed robbery?
• Izuka Chukwuemeka Onyema is the only link to the armed robbers and at the very least should be made to return the sums of money transferred to his account back to my brother-in-law’s account.
• Izuka Chukwuemeka Onyema should be eliminated from being a person of interest with regards to the armed robbery, but that requires he be questioned and the stolen money returned at the very least.

As you can see, this is all police work, not what you or anyone would expect civilians to do. This matter is complicated by the fact that my sister after much agitation was able to get GT Bank to correspond with Fidelity Bank, the result being Izuka Chukwuemeka Onyema’s account was restricted, but the funds have not yet been transferred back to my brother-in-law’s account.

When Izuka Chukwuemeka Onyema’s account was restricted, the armed robbers returned to terrorise my sister, my brother-in-law and their neighbours. We were lucky no one came to any harm because as the armed robbers were trying to gain access to their building, everyone was alerted and so my people escaped harm.

Not only have my people (my sister and brother-in-law) lost things, he was wounded and had to be operated on twice, they have their money stolen and locked away in an account owing to inertia on your part and that of the banks and they have been so terrified of reprisal attacks from the armed robbers that they have been rendered homeless, just 8 months into their marriage.

I have it on good authority that you had to be persuaded by more senior officers to be interested in investigating this crime, yet for one reason or another 5 weeks after the armed robbery, we are nowhere near any resolution, in apprehending the link person Izuka Chukwuemeka Onyema, in returning the stolen money or even retrieving the stolen goods.

The devastating impact on the lives of my sister, my brother-in-law and their neighbours is one that every reasonable person would expect that you are the senior police officer in their locality to be concerned about, but you have been scolding them for seeking justice and going above your head to encourage you to do your job. It is an unfortunate reading of events that are within your power to remediate.

I would think you want an easy life and this looks like an easy crime to resolve if you can rise to that challenge.

So, Sergeant Adebisi of Nigeria Police Force Office in Area A, Ajiwe Ajah Road, Lekki Expressway, I appeal to you once again, please for the sake of your reputation and the reputation of the Nigeria Police Force, get engaged, get involved and help resolve this matter. You have the details, you have the evidence of a crime having been committed, perish the thought that an inducement is required to do your job from the victims of crimes or worse still that anyone in your office is in cahoots with Izuka Chukwuemeka Onyema or the armed robbers.

Obviously, there is an alternative, if you are not interested in being a policeman, you can offer your resignation and allow others with a bit more enthusiasm in police work and bringing a sense of professionalism to the police force to take your place. Any well-meaning Nigerian would applaud the solving of crimes, most especially ones where the evidence is handed to the police on a plate.

Sergeant Adebisi, the ball is in your court.

Thank you for your kind consideration of my appeal and I look forward to the opportunity to celebrate your work as a policeman.

Yours sincerely,

Akin Akintayo (Brother and brother-in-law of the victims of crime in your area of influence.)

Appeal: My sister and her husband are being terrorised by an armed robber gang

My people robbed

On the night of the 23^rd of May 2017, my sister and brother-in-law were brutally attacked at home by armed robbers, he was inflicted with head injuries and the bandits made away with their mobile phones, her laptop which contained her PhD programme activities, her glasses, their bank cards and identity cards.

The thieves or an accomplice of theirs then raided my brother-in-law’s bank account and the money was transferred to a beneficiary account number (6018594851) with Fidelity Bank belonging to a Izuka Chukwuemeka Onyema, this apparently happened between 5:57 AM and 7:47 AM on the 24^th of May 2017.

They are terrorising them

My sister and brother-in-law on finding that moneys had been transferred out the account, informed their bank and a block was placed on the account of the beneficiary. Since then, the robbers returned and my family was saved because they were sighted at the point of breaking in again, but they are terrorising my family and that is just unacceptable.

Izuka Chukwuemeka Onyema needs to be picked up and interrogated to reveal who his actors and accomplices are to stop terrorising my sister and my brother-in-law. They are living in constant fear away from home and other places where their identities might compromise them, terrorised by criminals who have been thwarted in their atrocious enterprise.

Stop this lawlessness

This is lawlessness that cannot be allowed to continue any longer and I appeal to anyone who can initiate, expedite and help apprehend these people to save not just my sister and brother-in-law, but anyone else from being terrorised by this brigandage of menace.

The key person is Izuka Chukwuemeka Onyema, his account number 6018594851 with Fidelity Bank should have other pertinent details as his photograph and address where he can either be picked up or the investigation that start to build a picture of his contacts towards stopping this criminality once and for all.

Obviously, in nabbing this man, it is also possible that lots of stolen property can be retrieved and hopefully returned to their rightful owners.

Help me nab them

Now, this touches me more because, my sister and brother-in-law are newlyweds, who just started a new home, it is only over 7 months ago that we lost our baby sister. My brother-in-law is recovering, but they both need to be back safe in their home without being fearful of armed robbery reprisals.

My appeal is to the good offices of the law and process to get these criminals off the streets and allow the citizenry live their lives in peace and happiness.

As with most things Nigerian, we are left to do our own do-it-yourself detective footwork and investigations, the police have been redolent and nonchalant even with the evidence we already have to hand. The only alternative left is to drive a social media campaign in the hope that a resolution is possible. It is my hope that you will be engaged, interested and help bring these criminals to justice. Thank you.

The Big Short on my life and those of others

The patterns I see

When it comes to financial matters, I have always said my father is a brilliant accountant, but it did not come down through the genes. Successful as he was in his profession which he still practices on behalf of the Anglican diocese in which he resides, only one of my siblings took a career path that had any financial component.

However, I somehow have an affinity for noticing patterns, things that align and things that seem to be out of place, unfortunately, I have never exploited that knowledge to the full as over time I have watched things that were once an inkling become an industry where if I had been more driven by my deepest premonitions, I would have been one of the pioneers. No regrets.

In March 2000, I travelled to Munich for an interview with the now defunct Compaq Inc., I decided to spend a week there and during my visit I met with a futures trader who was heavily leveraged in dot.com stocks. My reading of the situation then was things were about to collapse, simply because I noticed a pattern.

My advice to him was to reduce his exposure, he looked at me with incredulity, within weeks the dot.com bubble burst and the rest is history.

As it touched me

I have a more personal story about how I was affected by the markets, just less than a decade later. I bought my apartment in Amsterdam 2001, having given my estate agent 6 weeks to complete the deal to pick up my keys on the 1^st of November 2001.

It was a 105m², 7th-floor apartment with large windows overlooking two old Amsterdam harbours, a wonderful place by any standards. My mortgage was at inception the same as paid for rent in another part of Amsterdam for about 18 months.

The trajectory as it then was, whilst the housing market seemed overheated, the interest rates were going down, and this happened progressively every two years until about 45% was shaved off my mortgage in 6 years.

That other marker

Meanwhile, there was an underlying current that should have sent alarm bells ringing that I ignored until it was too late. My mortgage was undergirded by a life insurance policy that I paid a hefty sum to every year and in the mortgage term of 25 years, it was supposed to have accumulated enough to pay off my mortgage.

Each year, accounting for administration costs and much else, nothing was being compounded into the policy, rather, I was seeing less of what I put in that I had to ask for a review of the conditions of my mortgage to ensure I had not been defrauded.

Everyone who had worked on my mortgage had already walked away with their commissions as the signs of a financial crisis appeared on the horizon with the sub-prime mortgage defaults in the United States.

The tsunami I could not outrun

I could not ignore what was happening, yet I felt like there was an earthquake somewhere far away and the water was receding from the beach in anticipation of a tsunami I could not escape, it was scary.

As so I wrote in August 2007:

Blog - Dishonest lending clue to market tremors

Then casually in October 2007:

Blog - Local situations in global straits

The tsunami had already come in and swept me away from my apparent comfort zone, a revision of my biennial fixed term mortgage saw a rise of 50 basis points, some consequent outgoings of about €550 a month in addition to what I was already paying.

No particular fault of ours, only the banks shoring up their books having messed up and gotten bailed out, with none of the people in charge of this debacle going to jail for anything, if any even got to be questioned for their atrocity.

Swept away

By then, it had become a case of Fixing Capitalist Errors with Socialist Favours which I wrote in December 2007.

Within two years of that, I was diagnosed with cancer, got treated, recovered, but the markets had dealt a blow to our livelihoods, the job markets also began to introduce unfavourable filters to eliminate foreigners from consideration where we once freely had access.

In the end, I sold my apartment at a loss after 10 and a half wonderful years, though barely covered by the insurance and eventually returned home to the UK to rebuild my life.

The Big Short

Earlier today, I went to watch The Big Short which is described as a biographical comedy-drama, and whilst I will agree it is biographical and it is a drama, it was no comedy when we look at the disaster it caused in millions of lives whilst those who found out what was wrong with the system walked away laughing to the bank.

At worst, the banks have been fined billions by the regulatory bodies, but there have been no major indictments, the legislative framework that was to help avoid a similar collapse of the banking system has been watered down and the banks have more or less returned to their brand of casino banking with new banksters slinging guns of dubious provenance as products of the highest quality.

We’re back on that merry-go-round of atrocity for which the generality of the populace has been made to pay dearly for in austerity and worse, whilst the politicians and the banks waltz away in illicit copulation.

Yet, in understanding this rotten and corrupt enterprise a bit more, history is probably going to repeat itself worse than before and the criminals will once again walk free.

Woe betide them.

Social Engineering: Crooks preying on our parents

A menacing problem

I think this is becoming an emergency in Nigeria and it requires we begin to focus on the menace of unconscionable, unscrupulous and merciless confidence tricksters preying on the vulnerable sectors of our society.

Last year, somebody called my mother informing her of my being in trouble abroad and convincingly persuaded her to part with some money. Having tricked her the first time, they applied more pressure at which time she chatted to my siblings who were able to break her out of the spell she had fallen under and stop the criminal activity.

Using my blog, I tried to create a storm and though we never apprehended the nasty piece of work, the bank at least got involved enough for about 3 weeks trying to get hold of the person who for the pressure and bad publicity that had gone out regarding his identity was forced to go to ground.

My mother’s situation was not an exception, the fact is our once strong, able parents are now older and less agile in terms of things in their daily lives, there are people out there ready to create situations of distress, panic, anxiety or fear and by doing so getting our now vulnerable and sometimes lonely parents to part with their life’s savings.

Abductions and hypnoses

I heard today of another case where a fine and wonderful lady in her 70s had gone to withdraw some cash from a bank and as she left the bank, she was accosted by persons who abducted her and took her to some place she can no more recollect.

It is very possible she was hypnotised because she gave them the money she had withdrawn and then she was dropped off at home where the next day under some sort of influence she returned to the bank to withdraw 5 times what she withdrew before and handed it over to the gang.

At the end of the second day, she apparently came to and informed her daughter of what had happened but swore her daughter to secrecy about informing other siblings. Meanwhile the gang was trying again to get her to withdraw more money for them and thankfully to no avail.

Tackling the issue

At first one has to be thankful that she came to no physical harm but the mental anguish and scars of such an encounter will no doubt be more lasting. She is not as chatty as she used to be and she rarely leave her home; this is a lady who has travelled the world has been fiercely independent apart from the fact that she had been widowed for over 3 decades.

I do not think the case of my mother and that of this amazing lady are unique, I have the feeling it is happening a lot but the victims are not talking or telling anyone for the embarrassment, the shame or the realisation that they are a lot more vulnerable than they are ready to let on.

Banks must profile

Banks are usually the centres of this corrupt enterprise because that is where the money is with people being cajoled, blackmail, shaken-down or rustled. They need to be aware that people are targeting their customers usually gaining information about accounts or other pertinent details that will not draw suspicion to criminal activity preying on the vulnerability of the elderly.

Besides, I think banks have a greater duty of care and concern towards these vulnerable sections of society and it is important that they adopt measures that are sympathetic and cognisant of withdrawal patterns of these people – such as alerts to successive withdrawals of large sums of money, facilitation of wired transfers rather than the handling of large sums of cash and advising that senior citizens for their good be better accompanied to and from the banks.

They need to create better profiles of their customers of a certain age, install triggers to alert to unusual activity and have better levels of customer care and challenge/response scenarios to help their customers safeguard their wealth especially when things are somewhat out of the person’s control.

Any other ideas you might have towards helping our parents evade these crooks will be welcome and please post them as comments.

Thank you.

Related posts

Johnson Ademola Babatunde - I'm on your case

Nigeria: Banking on some assurances

Nigeria: Giving your relations a heads-up on scammers

Editorial: Thirteenth of May 2011

The guilty roam free

The credit crisis which has been felt globally for the past few years still has the architects of this catastrophe rolling in the quids without a care in the world.

Many have wondered how this happened and why it was pre-empted as the professionals have continually feigned that it caught them unawares.

The investigations of a US Senate committee have yielded grounds for indictments to be brought against first Goldman Sachs for basically playing both the market and their clients in fanciful financial products whilst divest themselves of their liabilities and cajoling other institutions to buying up what they knew for sure was worthless.

Untying the Gordian knot

The Rolling Stones article lays out the case of The People versus Goldman Sachs in such fine detail with the use of useful vivid analogies that the layman would catch on to what an almighty confidence trick this was.

This was work that the regulators and the Department of Justice should have done but were both derelict in their duties and suborned into a dastardly evil capitalist enterprise that has robbed everyone blind and made the gangsters of banking otherwise known as “Banksters” the masters of the world.

Now that the case has been made and all the footwork done, one would hope the cajones exist in the boxers, briefs, jocks or I dare say panties of those who matter to visit the full force of the law on these people and they should not relent until every dime as been paid including interest.

The world would never forgive us if these banksters get away with the biggest highwayman’s looting of the bullion ever.

Roam to Rome

Schengen, a town in Luxembourg where in 1985 European countries agreed to relax border controls allowing free movement within European borders, it represented a kind of unity amongst Europeans between 22 states.

It has worked a treat for Europeans as a sign of integration and unity without the encumbrance of passport checks, inane questions at customs and every other inconvenience that pertains to traversing borders.

The Arab uprising on the Southern coast of the Mediterranean Sea has been a matter of concern already but the unrest in Libya has brought it to a head.

Apparently, Colonel Gaddafi, the besieged and buffeted leader of Libya is allowing the untrammelled flow of sub-Saharan Africans and others across the sea to Malta and Lampedusa in Italy creating panic on those islands along with the administrative and logistic nightmares of processing these asylum seekers.

Visas made wiser

With no one responding to Italy’s concerns about this influx, the Italians granted temporary visas to these aliens who under the Schengen agreement could cross borders to countries where they might feel more comfortable by reason of joining relations, being able to speak the language or recognising a country as a soft target.

That got France to sit up since a good deal of these aliens speak French and by the time you knew it, Gaddafi’s deftness had sown division amongst NATO allies on the immigration front as they try to enforce the no-fly zone in Libya.

Fresh blood for right-wing vampires

Then every little-minded country with their right-wing populist fear-mongering personality with their villager-visits-city mind-set stepped into the fray stoking angst and horror at the hordes invading their sacred lands of purity and superiority – time to race to the lowest common denominator.

Shut the gates, batten down the hatches, pull up the draw bridges, barricade the doors and let the rabid dogs roam to bite any that dare walk the streets.

Globalisation is going into decline and the nation state rises again just because the Arabs have awoken to the possibility of self-determination. What a strange world we live in.

Acknowledgements

The fantastic report about the Senate committee’s unravelling of Goldman Sachs’ con-job was published online by the Rolling Stones Magazine. Wikipedia has a webpage that explains the Schengen Area and the Schengen Agreement.

The Guardian announces the news of the furore that has erupted about the influx of aliens and the possible radical revision of Schengen.

Credit crunch: No man is an island ... it tolls for thee

The times are troubled

In these troubled times when the markets have gone into irrational freefall such that the first principles of free marketeering have failed to contain the excesses and fear rules like the darkest pall of an approaching tornado; one is left to reflect.

When the storm started brewing last year, there must have been many who thought their savings were secure, their pensions were fine, the stock markets had just reached their highest peaks and the values of their homes were in the stratosphere.

I first got hit by the fallout of the occurrences in the United States in November when my mortgage interest rate got a 50% hike which in monetary terms was a good whack on the goolies.

It affects us all

I have been fine, but a lot more has been going on and it has come closer to home than one finds comfortable.

If ever we thought the credit crunch as a distant rumour we know reality now; if ever we thought our savings were safe as in they were put in Fort Knox, there are many who cannot enter to get their money now; if ever we thought the bailout would quench the fire like a tsunami would wipe out everything, we only have to see how the markets tumble like an avalanche at Mount Everest.

The Titanic and the free market

There was a time when a great ocean liner [1] was built that many touted as unsinkable, so was the great free market economy that brought prosperity to many.

As it went through the waters of the Arctic Ocean someone spotted a large iceberg just as some saw that the debts and mortgages cannot been sustained but no one did anything about it and ripped into the hull of the ocean liner.

There was an emergency which has been called a credit crunch and all the experts and crew gathered to find ways to either keep the boat afloat or save the souls from perishing.

When they finally got the life boats out the women and children were allowed on first, these for the US Treasury were the banks – the men had to stay behind – men and women, families, people struggling with high prices, unaffordable mortgages, astronomical energy bills and so on.

Bale out or bail out

As we have been told, if the women and children in the eyes of the US Treasury were safe, they might just end up helping the men – bunkum.

There was no way they could bail out the water fast enough to stop the boat from taking on more water and sinking – this is no funny situation we are bailing out like mice from a sinking ship – they say this financial situation is as bad as the Depression of the 1930s, I can go back to 1912 as see a great human disaster of Titanic proportions.

It tolls for thee

But we pray as we have baled out in the cold icy waters that we might just be able to hold out till when Carpathia arrives; for this affects all rather than the few, it is global in its ramifications and local in its effects, no man is an island adrift from these times and troubles – it brings us to the quietest contemplation of realities of life and death for in the words of John Donne [2] we did ask for whom the bell tolls long ago as the financial turmoil began to unravel – Alas, as he went on to say – it tolls for thee.

And so suddenly we have to heed the words of our leaders, we are all in this together and all countries should coordinate their plans together to get out of this rather humongous mess.

The abridged version of For whom the bell tolls [3] appears below but the fuller version of the sonnet appears here from Devotions upon Emergent Occasions [4].

No man is an island,
Entire of itself.
Each is a piece of the continent,
A part of the main.
If a clod be washed away by the sea,
Europe is the less.
As well as if a promontory were.
As well as if a manner of thine own
Or of thine friend's were.
Each man's death diminishes me,
For I am involved in mankind.
Therefore, send not to know
For whom the bell tolls,
It tolls for thee.

Sources

[1] RMS Titanic - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[2] John Donne - Poetry Foundation: The online home of the Poetry Foundation

[3] Home -> Inspirations -> Poems -> For Whom the Bell Tolls - John Donne

[4] John Donne - For whom the Bell Tolls

Bale out/Bail out - World Wide Words

Being fooled out of my liberty for temporary safety

Hating our freedoms

Each time I hear that mantra about terrorists hating our freedoms, I look at how we have systematically moved beyond what terrorists might have intended with how we have curtailed our own freedoms in the quest for safety.

In the Netherlands, until about a year ago, it was OK to walk around with a photocopy of your identity like passport and offer the real thing when specifically asked at a later date.

For people who are not Dutch citizens, their identity is really kept in their passports and they have to carry that around with them amidst the clamour about illegal immigrants and crime, nobody has thought about the additional consequences of the loss of such important documents – they just want to see your identity, no other questions asked.

Air Travel Gloom

Months ago, I spelt the end of the joy of air travel with those outrageous restrictions predicated on people who were going to blow up trans-Atlantic flights that they would probably have boarded without passports, tickets and by mixing baby milk and toothpaste, scenting it with some celebrity piss water.

We now have uniform European regulations about what you can carry on board a flight; my advise, check it all on, forget the hand baggage stuff, they even take my cane off me so that I can hobble through the screening machine.

Besides, considering the Islamophobia that surrounds some of these benign rules, we pay homage by having to take off our shoes, just as if I were entering a mosque.

Now my bank

Nothing really got to me more than when I got this letter in the weekend requiring me to visit a branch of my bank within 10 working days to show my identity and give my signature to be recorded in some secure system – probably available to some secret service personnel anywhere in the world.

The fact is, if the data is collected, no matter the assurances at collection, it can be unscrupulously accessed, laws can change granting untrammelled access to the data on the premise of protecting our security.

The veiled threat, even though I have run the account for about 7 years and it has probably handled transactions that total over half a million Euros, is, they will be forced to block my account with the comforting statement – We naturally assume that this would not be necessary.

The kind of statement you can expect if the matron at Guantanamo Bay called round to pat your head, or maybe, give you a dunking.

Identity card flawed logic

This follows the premise that having an identity card prevents terrorism, as if the document has a bleeper that indicates a terrorist is in the vicinity.

The other thing would be if banks have been offered a watch list such that you walk into the bank and before you know it, truck loads of armed personnel are shooting down the door to cart you away a cadaver victim of excitable but suspect intelligence.

None of this stuff bodes well for our civil liberties and we are lead like helpless sheep to the slaughter of all was won and blood spilt for in the last century.

Fooled out of liberty

I should now expect a visit to the bank that handles my mortgage, then one to the bank that handles my credit card, I wonder if I have to go to Brighton to get certified to use my American Express card – where would all this end?

Then, I suddenly, I wonder if I am deserving of my freedom or liberty as our parliamentarians allow the politics of fear, the lifeblood of the war on terrorism to obliterate the essential context of Benjamin Franklin’s words of over 250 years ago.

“They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety” – What do we have left of our liberty and how safe do we feel?

Beyond that, I would give Abraham Lincoln the last word on this matter, in the midst of all that is being done to ensure we are no more caught unawares by terrorist, are we being fooled or taken for fools?

“You may fool all the people some of the time; you can even fool some of the people all the time; but you can’t fool all of the people all the time”

Bush learnt that lesson last week; hopefully, more people would refuse to be fooled anymore by this phoney war of power trips and marauding police states in Western democracies, in the name of the war on terror.

References

Liquid Bombers Prove: “They hate our freedoms”

Freedom, the prison of civil society