The Lagos State Special Offences Court in Ikeja has sentenced Ojora Kehinde to seven years’ imprisonment for fraudulently converting N81.3 million belonging to Sterling Bank Plc.
In her judgement delivered on Friday, the judge, Mojisola Dada, held that the prosecution proved its case beyond reasonable doubt, describing the evidence against Mr Kehinde as “overwhelming.”
She further directed the prosecution to pursue all legal avenues to ensure full restitution of the stolen funds to the bank.
According to the EFCC, Kehinde exploited a temporary glitch in Sterling Bank’s electronic transfer system which allowed certain customers to move funds far above their actual balances. On 17 May 2022, with only N3,000 in his account, he transferred N500,000 in three tranches to his wife, Amina Ojora’s account.
He repeated similar transactions over time, eventually diverting N178.2 million in total. Of this, N122 million went directly into his wife’s account, while other sums were routed to additional beneficiaries. Sterling Bank recovered about N68 million during its internal investigation, but N81.3 million remained missing.
The prosecution argued that Mr Kehinde’s actions constituted “dishonest conversion” as defined under the Criminal Law of Lagos State. Significantly, the defendant did not call any witnesses, choosing to rest his case on the prosecution’s evidence.
Justice Dada convictedKehinde under Section 280(2), punishable by Section 287 of the Criminal Law of Lagos State, 2015, and sentenced him to seven years in prison.
The case fits into a wider pattern of fraud linked to system glitches in Nigerian banks. In May, a Federal High Court in Lagos ordered the final forfeiture of about N1.29 billion stolen from Sterling Bank through a similar glitch, directing the funds to be returned to the bank.
Earlier in April, another Lagos court ordered the forfeiture of a property purchased with proceeds of an N89 million Sterling Bank fraud traced to the same system vulnerability.
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