Justice Oluwatoyin Ipaye of the Lagos State High Court on Thursday, June 9, sentenced Olawale Garuba to thirty nine years imprisonment for stealing from the dead.
Garuba was arraigned alongside six others in July 2015 for conspiring among themselves to steal over N30, 000,000 (Thirty Million Naira only) from the bank account a deceased customer of a new generation bank.
The bank would discover the fraud when it became obvious that some of its employees, including the convict had colluded with proxies to steal from a dormant account of one of the bank’s customers.
Subsequently, the bank arrested the employees and handed them over to the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission for investigation and prosecution.
During arraignment, they all pleaded not guilty to 18 counts of fraud and consequently, Justice Ipaye declined their bail application and remanded them in prison custody.
After Garuba changed his plea from ‘not guilty’ to ‘guilty’ on June 2, Justice Ipaye convicted him and adjourned the case till Wednesday, June 8, for sentencing.
On the day of sentencing, Justice Ipaye said she has no sympathy for the convict because he compromised his position as a banker to steal from a dead customer whose money would have been beneficial to her family.
She found the banker guilty on 13 of the 18 counts, and sentenced him to three years imprisonment on each count.
The sentences are to run concurrently from the date of his first detention.
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