{"id":72156,"date":"2025-08-05T15:38:34","date_gmt":"2025-08-05T15:38:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/?p=72156"},"modified":"2025-08-05T15:38:34","modified_gmt":"2025-08-05T15:38:34","slug":"abuja-court-jails-21-foreigners-for-cybercrime","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/2025\/08\/05\/abuja-court-jails-21-foreigners-for-cybercrime\/","title":{"rendered":"Abuja Court Jails 21 Foreigners for Cybercrime"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>By Samuel Adeola<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>A Federal High Court in Abuja has sentenced 21 foreign nationals to one year in prison each for cybercrime, with an option of a \u20a61 million fine.<\/p>\n<p>The convicts were also ordered to leave Nigeria within six working days.<\/p>\n<p>Justice Ekerete Akpan gave the ruling after a plea bargain between the defendants and the Nigerian Police Force.<\/p>\n<p>He further directed the forfeiture of all electronic devices used in the crimes to the Federal Government.<\/p>\n<p>The convicts, mostly from China, are part of 109 foreigners facing prosecution for alleged cybercrime, money laundering, and threats to national security.<\/p>\n<p>Their lawyers, Linda Ikpeazu and Julius Mba, said the fines would be paid immediately.<\/p>\n<p>The court adjourned the trial of the remaining 88 defendants to October 22 and 23, 2025.<\/p>\n<p>The suspects were arrested in 2024 at Katampe District, Abuja, for operating a fraudulent, unregistered gaming platform. They were arraigned on six counts, including cybercrime, money laundering, and unlawful residency, and earlier granted bail of \u20a61 billion each.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Samuel Adeola A Federal High Court in Abuja has sentenced 21 foreign nationals to one year in prison each for cybercrime, with an option of a \u20a61 million fine. The convicts were also ordered to leave Nigeria within six working days. Justice Ekerete Akpan gave the ruling after a plea bargain between the defendants [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":32,"featured_media":72157,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1386,172],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-72156","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-judiciary","category-news"],"aioseo_notices":[],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72156","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/32"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=72156"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72156\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":72158,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72156\/revisions\/72158"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/72157"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=72156"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=72156"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=72156"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}