Court fines 18-year-old ₦200,000 over $800 gift card scam in Lagos
- Hassan Usman Olamilekan pleaded guilty to one money laundering charge at the Federal High Court in Ikoyi.
- Justice Dipeolu fined him ₦200,000 and ordered ₦1 million paid to the Federal Government.
- The EFCC says he posed as an American woman to trick a US citizen into sending gift cards.
A Federal High Court in Ikoyi, Lagos, has convicted an 18-year-old, Hassan Usman Olamilekan, over a gift card scam that pulled in $800 from a United States citizen.
Justice Dipeolu sentenced him on Friday, 30 October 2026, after he admitted to a single money laundering charge filed by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), the anti-graft agency said in a statement.
The court fined him ₦200,000 and ordered him to pay ₦1 million to the Federal Government. He will stay in a correctional centre until both sums are paid.
The judge also ordered that two phones recovered in connection with the case — an iPhone 11 Pro and a Poco C71 — be forfeited.
How the scam worked, according to the EFCC
The agency said Olamilekan, who says he is from Benin Republic but was born in Nigeria, ran lottery scams across Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Zangi and iMessage.
According to the EFCC, he met the American, Gary Brewer, on the Zangi messaging app while posing as a white American woman called Julie Leach.
He told Brewer he had won a $250 million lottery and needed money to activate the prize before it could be claimed, the agency said. Brewer was then persuaded to send gift cards through the app.
The EFCC said Olamilekan admitted selling the cards on an app called Cardsonic, changing the proceeds to naira and sending the money to his grandmother's OPay account. He confessed to making $800 from the scheme, the agency said.
An EFCC operative, Ebuka Abanga, presented the facts of the case to the court before the judge convicted him.
Olamilekan was one of 21 people arrested when EFCC operatives raided Applewood Estate on Orchid Road, Lekki, on 26 October 2026 — four days before his sentencing.
What happens next
Olamilekan remains in a correctional centre until he pays the ₦200,000 fine and the ₦1 million restitution ordered by the court.
For ordinary Nigerians, the case is a reminder that gift card requests from strangers online are a common fraud route, and that the EFCC is pursuing suspects arrested in Lagos estates.
