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The Federal High Court sitting in Ilorin, Kwara State, has convicted and sentenced a 19-year-old undergraduate, Oyedotun Adebowale, to two years’ imprisonment for cyberfraud.
The Ilorin Zonal Command of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, which prosecuted Adebowale for Internet fraud, told the court that N21m was found in the bank account of the Kwara State Polytechnic undergraduate.

According to the EFCC, Adebowale was prosecuted on one count before Justice Muhammed Sani of the Federal High Court sitting in Ilorin.
The judge found him guilty of the charge and sentenced him to two years imprisonment with a fine option of N300,000.

“Investigations had earlier revealed that Oyedotun had under his possession over N21m suspected to be proceeds of unlawful activities and a Toyota Camry, which he purchased using his mother’s name,” the EFCC said.

Upon arraignment, he pleaded guilty to the charge.
Counsel for the EFCC, Sesan Ola, reviewed the facts of the case and tendered the extra-judicial statements of the defendant, iPhone 12 Promax, the key and particulars of a Toyota Camry recovered from him, and a draft of N350,000 which were admitted in evidence.

The counsel urged the court to take judicial notice of the unchallenged evidence placed before it as well as the provisions of the law to convict the defendant as charged.
Justice Sani held that the prosecution had established its case against the defendant.
In sentencing the convict, the judge ordered that all items recovered from him be forfeited to the Federal Government.

The shareholders of Twitter have sued billionaire Elon Musk for manipulating the price of the company’s shares downward through his comments after the $44 billion deal agreement. The shareholders in the lawsuit accused Musk of deliberately passing negative comments about Twitter to drag down its price on the stock market.

The suit was filed Wednesday in federal district court for Northern California and argued that Musk intentionally drove down the company’s stock to secure a better deal.
According to them, the billionaire’s tricks worked as Twitter has lost $8 billion in valuation since the Buyout was announced. They added that Musk was aware of the bots problem and other issues Twitter was facing before agreeing to the $44 billion deal.

Musk had last week put the acquisition deal on hold pending the determination of the actual number of bots on Twitter, which the company put at less than 5%.
The shareholders while narrating the cause of the lawsuit said: “On April 25, 2022, Twitter, Inc. announced that it had agreed to sell itself to Elon Musk for $54.20 per share, or approximately $44 billion (the “Buyout” or “Proposed Buyout”). Musk negotiated the Twitter Buyout over the weekend of April 23-24, 2022 without carrying out any due diligence.

“The Buyout is only conditioned on approval of Twitter’s shareholders at a meeting to be scheduled this summer, regulatory approval, and closing of the Buyout by October 24, 2022. Before agreeing to buy Twitter for $44 billion, Musk, one of the world’s richest individuals valued at $276 billion according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, and a sophisticated businessman with a phalanx of lawyers and investment bankers, according to the press, specifically agreed to waive detailed due diligence as a condition of the merger agreement.”

“At the time, Musk was well aware that Twitter had a certain amount of “fake accounts” and accounts controlled by “bots” and had in fact settled a lawsuit based on the fake accounts for millions of dollars. Musk had tweeted about that issue at Twitter several times in the past, prior to making his offer to acquire Twitter with full knowledge of the bots.“

Musk and his team were also well aware of an $809.5 million settlement Twitter entered into in September 2021, in a securities fraud class action alleging Twitter overstated its user numbers and growth rate. All the documents from that case were publicly available to Musk, including a website containing, among other things, the Court’s order denying Twitter’s motion for summary judgment.
“Because Tesla’s stock is worth much less now than when Musk agreed to buy Twitter, Musk is at risk of a margin call or a requirement to put up more cash. Musk quickly acted to attempt to mitigate these personal risks to himself by engaging in unlawful conduct that moved the price of Twitter’s stock down,” they added.

The shareholders further alleged that “Musk proceeded to make statements, send tweets, and engage in conduct designed to create doubt about the deal and drive Twitter’s stock down substantially in order to create leverage that Musk hoped to use to either back out of the purchase or re-negotiate the buyout price by as much as 25% which, if accomplished, would result in an $11 billion reduction in the Buyout consideration.“

As detailed herein, Musk’s conduct was and continues to be illegal, in violation of the California Corporations Code, and contrary to the contractual terms he agreed to in the deal.
ALSO, READ  Ghana NPP Estimates Cost For Electricity From Nuclear PowerMusk’s market manipulation worked — Twitter has lost $8 billion in valuation since the Buyout was announced.”
The billionaire, who has put his $44 billion deal to buy the company on hold, believes that there are more spam or bot accounts on Twitter than the company has claimed.

Testing the claim through his over 93 million followers on Twitter, Musk posted: “Twitter claims that >95% of daily active users are real, unique humans. Does anyone have that experience?”
He then provided two options for people to vote: One, laughter emoji for real humans, and the second option a bot icon.

After 13 hours of the poll, over 1.3 million Twitter users had voted with 52.5 percent in favor of humans and 47.5 percent in favor of bots, as of the time of filing this report.
The poll is to last for 24 hours.