Thursday, May 14, 2009

Don't Be An Accomplice To Criminals

So many people have become accomplices to crimes they hardly had a faintest idea about their design, planning and execution by their carelessness, loquaciousness and stupidity.


At a seminar for bank Chief Security Officers held at the University of Lagos, Nigeria in which I was involved as a facilitator, one of the attendees told us a story of how account holders of a particular bank had their deposits depleted through criminal activities. According to the bank security chief, one Office Assistant with the bank had been a regular beneficiary of beer, pepper soup and other delicacies at a drinking joint he visits regularly, from people he hardly knew before then. This Office Assistant, we were told, got his bill paid one day by these strangers, some young men who told him they just liked his person. Over time, they became friends and they kept on paying his bills for drinks and chops. In the course of time, when the Office Assistant told them he worked in a bank they pretended they never knew where he worked. When the “friends” felt they had gained his confidence, they made a seemingly harmless request, for the Office Assistant to do them a favor. He is to just plug a Flash Drive they would give to him into any computer used in his bank before resumption of work and to unplug it at the end of the day and return to them. He did as they requested. With the information copied into the flash drive, the criminals gained access to several accounts of depositors with the bank and withdrew money running into millions or Naira.


While in this case the Office Assistant may be aware of the implication of his action but blinded by the benefits he had been getting from his “friends” and the expected rewards, there are cases where people help criminals with information without knowing. There are several instances of people who talk about their places of work, how rich their bosses are, the lifestyle of their bosses, when salaries are paid in their companies, the arrival of certain people they know from abroad, some projects those close to them are engaged in and some issues they consider harmless but which criminals further probe to get more information to strike. Sometimes, all the person was trying to do was to show off how well his/her organization is doing or how connected he/she is to powerful people, not knowing that somebody with a criminal mind would use that information to advantage.


Beware from whom you accept gifts. Haven’t you heard that there is no free lunch? Also, beware of what you say in public places or to close associates about your organization or about even those you know who are doing well. A criminal may just be around to pick that information and strike. That makes you an accomplice to the crime!

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