Matilda Omonaiye/
Officers attached to the Rapid Response Squad (RRS) of the Lagos State Police Command have busted a crime ring that uses housemaids to raid their employers’ homes.
Newsmakers learnt that the RRS has arrested an agent assisting in the recruitment of the maids of horror who abscond with the money, jewellery and other belongings of their employers.
The suspect was identified as 37-year-old Francis Okputu, a former dry-cleaner who has been using his influence to bring job seekers to Lagos and that of his wife who also helps him bring people from her hometown to work in Lagos as housemaids.
According to the officers, led by DCP Tunji Disu, Okputu’s mode of operation and agreement with the job seekers is to help them get jobs as maids and domestic workers. He collects half of their salary for the first month as a commission fee and he had been doing this since 2003 predominantly on the Lagos Mainland.
In his confessional statement, Okputu admitted that he was helping people get housemaids as an agent and he plants not less than 15 domestic workers every year and gets half of their salaries as his commission but began to change his tactics after his financial burdens rose.
“I have been helping Lagosians get house-helps and everybody in my neighbourhood knows that’s what I do and they also make recommendations and link me with their relatives who need my service.”
Okputu added that sometime in May this year a friend directed one Joy Onoz to him to help her get a housemaid job “which I did and all was fine until the next month when she began to call me that her Mistress does not like her and she will like me to help do something about it”.
Knowing how wealthy Joy’s Madam, Okputu began to find means of looting the home of the unsuspecting employer. He allegedly called Joy one day and warned her not to speak English throughout their conversation. He also allegedly told her to steal her madam’s money, pieces of jewellery and help him get her picture and deliver it to him in an undisclosed place.
The gold jewellery he told Joy would be replaced with copper and he would take the picture to a prophetess who will help him bewitch and make her not to question any of the girl’s deed after stealing her things.
Joy while talking to policemen about her agent’s move to loot her employer quickly told her Madam of Okputu’s plans and they played along with his arrangement. The Mistress gave Joy some hard currencies and Jewelry with her picture and told her to contact the agent that she has successfully gotten some valuables.
Okputu unknowingly instructed Joy to meet him at Iyana-Ipaja to handover her loots to him and that he would arrange how to get the fakes across to her by doing imitations of the jewellery to avoid any suspicion. Officers who had been contacted by the employer swung into action and laid siege for the agent at the agreed location where he was arrested after receiving the loots.
After his arrest, the Decoy team of RRS visited some housemaid placed by Okputu in different parts of Lagos to find out if the agent had at one time or the other asked them to bring their employer’s valuables and also urged them to stay clear of any plan that is contrary to the law.
The police also visited the said prophetess who was to help Okputu hypnotize Joy’s mistress and she disclosed that the last time she saw him was in February 2018 when he came for prayer and asked her to help hypnotize a woman who employed one of his clients but she refused his demand and sent him out of her church because she wouldn’t indulge in such practice as a servant of God.
Officers recovered from Okputu when joy was trailed to Iyana Ipaja, the point of exchange of the stolen items, $15 notes, sets of gold jewellery worth N450, 000 and a picture.
The Commissioner of Police, CP Adamu Muazu in his reaction to the incident directed the transfer of the case to State CID office and urged Lagosians to be conscious of whom they employ as domestic staff to avoid theft of their hard-earned properties.
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