From Ayo Olowu, Osogbo
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The Osun State Command of the Department of State Services (DSS) at the weekend paraded a 62 – year old man, one Festus Adelabu who allegedly had been defrauding unsuspecting members of the public under the guise of helping them to secure enlistment into the service.

The suspect, while allegedly parading self as Recruitment Officer of DSS with the rank of Assistant Director, had defrauded many people and even built a house in Emure Ekiti with the proceeds of the crime.

According to the Osun State Director of the Service, Mr. Brown Ekwoaba who paraded him, 16 people have been identified as victims of the suspect, and from eight of the number, Adelabu was said to have collected a sum of N3.150m.

Adelabu who claimed to have been disengaged from the defunct National Electric Power Authority (NEPA) in 2012, was nabbed by the Special Incident Response Team of the command on December 20, 2018 in Owode-Ede, Osun State while in the process of obtaining money from another victim.

Ekwoaba added that the suspect defrauded eight people from Osun State, two people from Ondo, three from Oyo and one from Kwara States before nemesis caught up with him.

While responding to questions from journalists, the suspect said hard times led him into the crime.

“I was doing business with my retirement benefits. I was selling rice and shoes until when the Offa/Erinle crisis started, and my shop located around Sanni Abba area was burnt.

“I relocated to Ibadan and started trading again. I started calling myself DSS when I was returning from Saki one day, and some customs men stopped our vehicle and wanted to impound my goods. It just came to my mind that I should lie that I was an officer of DSS.

“I told them that and they immediately asked me to go. Since then, I have been telling people that I work for the DSS. I am married to three women. One is late. I have many children but three of them are still very young. They are in my hometown. If the Service can have mercy on me, I will turn a new leaf”.

The Osun DSS Director said Adelabu would be arraigned in court for prosecution to serve as deterrent to others who might want to contemplate such line of criminality.