A United Kingdom court has sentenced Saheed Azeez, a Nigerian man who told the authorities that he fled from persecution by Boko Haram, to over five years imprisonment.

Azeez relocated to the UK in 2013 and won the sympathy of the immigration officials to be granted asylum after claiming that Boko Haram members were after his life over his alleged sexual orientation.

The court found Azeez to have coordinated crimes to the tune of £220,000 involving about 272 victims in the UK. Additionally, Azeez conveniently dated three women and fathered three children in Wigan after deceiving the authorities into accepting that he was a gay.

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HOW THE FRAUD WORKED

The prosecutors described his illicit engagements as a sophisticated and well-resourced scam. His relationship with the three women helped him form a network suitable for the cyber fraud.

Investigations into his activities showed that strangers provided fake postal addresses for Azeez to use to receive mail order parcels, largely second-hand smart phones and cameras from a UK-based seller and eBay. He would then pick up the orders from the fake addresses.

Between September 2020 and November 2021, he scammed hundreds of victims. The Nigerian national would convince the device sellers to deliver high-value devices to him with a promise to pay on delivery.

When he was arrested, the police recovered some phones from him. One of the phones reportedly contained a contact named ‘Baddest Boy’, with whom he had shared videos of some stolen phones.

Daily Mail reported Andy Evans, the prosecutor, as follows: “It seems these fraudsters would contact victims in the UK who were selling consumer electronics online on various platforms including eBay, Facebook Marketplace and WhatsApp – and victims were persuaded to provide their items prior to payment being made.

“They would be given a UK postal address to send the items to – from where the the conspirators could pick them up and sell them on for 100 per cent profit. These goods were addressed to a fake ID and sent to various addresses with no identifiable link to the fraudsters.

“There the goods would be collected and sold and the occupants of the addresses would get a cut. Azeez wasn’t necessarily the architect of the fraud but he provided his services as a sub-contractor.”

Trying to argue for a lesser punishment, Chloe Fordham, Azeez’s lawyer, pleaded to consider his story of persecution in Nigeria. She said Azeez “came to the UK in 2013 as an asylum seeker and he has now been granted refugee status and that is a result of the threats he faces in Nigeria”, adding that “whatever sentence he faces may result in his deportation and he fears that more than anything”.

The defence attorney argued that her client was pressured into involving himself in the crime. “‘His involvement in these matters began when he thought was doing legitimate work delivering and collecting parcels but pressure was put on him to collect parcels which he knew contained items obtained through fraud,” she was quoted to have said.

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Judge Nicholas Clarke KC of Bolton Crown Court sentenced him to five years and two months imprisonment. The Home Office will deport him to Nigeria on completion of his jail term.

Nine homeowners who conspired with him to use their addresses are billed to be sentenced next year.