Ex-Deputy Comptroller of Correctional Service is charged by EFCC with a N8.7 million land fraud.

The 62-year-old retired former deputy comptroller of the correctional service was charged with land fraud by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission's Abuja Zonal Command on Tuesday. He appeared before a high court in Bwari, Abuja.

Odeyemi was charged with offences that had elements of land fraud, according to the EFCC's Director of Media and Publicity, Wilson Uwujaren.

In the statement, it was stated that Kayode Odeyemi, a 62-year-old retired former deputy comptroller of prisons, had been charged with two offences that had a loose connection to land fraud before Justice M.A. Madugu of the Federal Capital Territory High Court in Bwari, Abuja.

"That you, Kayode Odeyemi, sometime in December 2019 in Abuja, within the jurisdiction of this Honourable Court, did obtain the sum of N6,500,000 from Joseph N. Emelieze, paid into your First Bank account number 2015894843, under the pretence that the said payment was meant for the purchase of a plot of land located at Sabon Lugbe, Abuja, a fact that you knew to be false and thereby committed an offence contrary to the provisions of this Constitution,"

Odeyemi is charged in count two with cheating Joemelyz Global of N2,200,000 that was deposited into his Wema Bank account number 0121093181 to acquire a block of land in Sabon Lugbe, Abuja.

Odeyemi, however, entered a not guilty plea to both charges.

"Justice Madugu continued the matter to September 19, 2022, for the trial to begin, and granted the defendant bail of one million naira with two sureties in like quantity, one of whom must be a civil worker residing within the court's jurisdiction."