How Policemen Threatened To Kill Me, Extorted N300,000 From Me For Having Crypto Apps On My Phone — Lagos Man Cries Out

In what will come across as a startling development, a Nigerian Twitter user who identified himself as Uche Anthony has narrated how police officers extorted the sum of N300,000 from him on Wednesday in Lagos.

Uche identified one of the policemen who accosted him as Patrick Abah.

"They were 4 in number. They drove us to one police station F division in Ikeja," Uche later told SaharaReporters in an interview.

He said he was forced to part with the money because his life was threatened.

"They started making all sorts of threats to lock me up and no one will know where I am. Since they had my phone, I couldn’t call anyone,” he said.

On his Twitter handle, Uche said the policemen appeared to be offended when they realised that he had Binance App and Trust Wallet on his iPhone13 pro max phone.

Binance is a mobile cryptocurrency trading application while Trust Wallet mobile application is the official crypto wallet of Binance, which can be used to send, receive and store Bitcoin and many other cryptocurrencies and digital assets.

"I just got accosted by the police and I was extorted of 300k in Lagos. Simply because I have Binance and Trust wallet on my phone. I use an iPhone13 pro max and I am in a lot of crypto groups and I am talking to foreign numbers who happen to be my uncles and cousins abroad," Uche tweeted on Wednesday.

He continued: "They seized my phone and won’t let me even explain. I can’t even start explaining. For the first time in my life, someone cocked a gun at me and said I should enter the car. I’m still in the trauma of the experience.

“I could quickly pick (sic) up the name of one of the police officers.

"They insisted I must pay them more than half of what is in my account. They went to my message inbox and saw my GTB balance. I said I wasn’t paying a dime and they said I’ll sleep in the cell and no one will know coz they were with my phone.

“I was so scared of my life as I have read stories of people shot dead and abandoned somewhere.

"They drove me about for hours and we started negotiating. They said 500k or nothing. Omo, I started thinking that these guys might just kill me and I don’t want to trend with the hashtag #justiceforuche for a Justice I might never get. My mum, my dad and siblings and how everything will play out.

"I mellowed down and started negotiating. They drove me to a bank along Sheraton hotel by Maryland and asked me to go and withdraw cash. All the while they had my phone so I could not make any recording or take any pictures. They took the money from me and destroyed the withdrawal receipt.

"They had me order a bolt driver before letting me go," Uche added. 

Efforts to reach Benjamin Hundeyin, the state police public relations officer were not successful as his mobile line indicated that his phone was switched off.