- N1000 notes turn to N100 denomination
There was pandemonium at a Samsung showroom located along Airport Road, Warri, Delta State, last Saturday, when N480, 000 cash of N1,000 denomination used by two unidentified men to purchase two expensive phones, Galaxy S6 Edge, from the dealer, suddenly transformed to N100 notes, shortly after the buyers had disappeared from the vicinity of the shop.
Narrating how the mysterious incident occurred, the owner of the shop, simply identified as Mrs. Deborah, said that the two unidentified men came to her showroom in a red car with Kano registration number plate to buy the two phones with the mystery money.
She said one of the men entered her showroom and demanded to buy the two phones without betraying any sign that they were actually fraudsters going about with such fetish money.
Deborah said, “The two men looked like people who were in a hurry. The other man was waiting outside and was acting as if something was wrong with their car, while one of them came in and said he wanted to buy the two brand of phones.”
She added that although there were many customers in her shop on the day of the incident, because these mysterious men wanted to buy very expensive phones, she decided to attend to them herself.
The dealer further said that after examining the phone, the man brought out bundles of N1000 notes and paid for the two phones with the money.
The mysterious customer, according to her, did not even give her the opportunity to copy the IMEI number of the phones before he dashed out from her shop with the loot and drove off in his car.
“The man was so much in a hurry that he did not even wait to collect his receipt. He just dashed out to meet his colleague, who was waiting for him in the car, and both of them zoomed off.
“I got the shock of my life when I started counting the money. The moment I started counting the money, the N1000 notes mysteriously started changing to N100. At that moment, I raised the alarm and everybody gathered around me to see what was happening.“Some, who could not believe what they were seeing with their eyes, started running out of the showroom. There was panic everywhere that day because nobody had seen that kind of a thing before. I was also afraid but because it was my shop, I could not run away.
“That was when it dawned on me that I had been mysteriously duped by these two men. When we alerted the security officers on guard, it was too late because the men had already left and they were nowhere to be found,” she added.
Deborah said she had to take the mysterious money to the B’ Division Police Station to report the case.
She said at the police station the officers on duty refused to even touch the money and only asked her to wait for the Divisional Police Officer, who, however, did not show up eventually.
As at the time of filing this report, the DPO was not available for comment. Efforts to reach him on his mobile phone were not successful.
Sources at the police station, however, said investigation of the case was still going on.
