Augustine Anosike, the second prosecution witness of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), on Tuesday gave his testimony in the case involving Afeez Fashola, popularly known as Naira Marley before Justice Nicholas Oweibo of the Federal High Court sitting in Ikoyi, Lagos.
Naira Marley was arraigned by the EFCC on 20th May, 2019, on 11 counts on conspiracy, possession of counterfeit credit cards, and fraud to which he pleaded not guilty.
The forensic expert of the EFCC, Anosike, told the court how several credit card numbers were extracted while from Naira Marley’s mobile phone, while analysing the content of a total of 2,410 messages found on the phone.
Anosike said that Exhibit F was a conclusion of his analysis of the defendant’s iPhone X version 10.6, model A 1901. He also gave the IMEL number of the iPhone and the SIM ICCID number in open court.
Anosike who was led in evidence by the prosecution counsel, Rotimi Oyedepo, described the Apple iPhone as a sophisticated device capable of storing a large volume of information.
He said: “It is the SIM card that basically identifies users of applications like WhatsApp,” he told the court.
“It, therefore, means that as long as a number has already been registered with a particular WhatsApp account, it matters less if such a user leaves the country.
“There are cases where a WhatsApp application can still be used even though the registered SIM card is not inserted in the phone. The chatting app used in the analysed device was WhatsApp.”
While analysing the phone, Anosike said a total of 977 Short Message Service (SMS) and 1,433 chat messages were discovered.
“We also discovered seven pending status update messages. On November 26th, 2018, there was an outgoing message registered about 3:32pm, with a credit card number. This message was sent to one Yadd.
“On December 11th, 2018, there was an incoming message to the defendant’s device which read ‘Your One Time Passcode (OTP) to verify your mobile number is 248716.”
He said that another message was sent at 5:06pm by one Hiya Bayi to a recipient with the name Raze on the same day. The message contain another credit card number.
On December 12th, 2018, according to Anosike, another incoming message at 10:16pm which read “tried and it was unsuccessful; sure you are not rinsing it out then giving it to me to try.’
At this junction, the prosecution counsel then told the court that all the analysed messages and cards are in a Compact Disc (CD, but that the prosecution had only printed out those portions it considered material to its case.
He then asked if the prosecution could bring a projector to play the CD in the open court or not.
Justice Oweibo said he had no problem with that while the defence counsel Ojo did not raise an objection.
The matter was adjourned to Wednesday for the prosecution to play the CD on a projector.
