The Pentagon has begun preparing the US military for the presence of openly gay troops in its ranks and said a training programme would begin in February.

Gay troops could begin serving openly by the summer, once training has been completed and the White House agrees the policy will not hinder fighting.

But the Pentagon warned that troops' same-sex spouses would not be eligible for military benefits.

Last month the US Congress overturned the "don't ask, don't tell" policy.

Past battles

Mr Obama signed the law allowing gay people serving in the military to be open about their sexuality last month.

"Starting this year, no American will be forbidden from serving the country they love because of who they love," he said in his State of the Union speech earlier this week..

FRANCE’S CONSTITUTIONAL court has upheld a ban on gay marriage, reviving a political row and prompting opposition calls for the government to change the law.

In rejecting a challenge taken by a lesbian couple with four children, the court said it found no conflict between current law on same-sex marriage and the principle of equality. It noted that it was for parliament rather than the constitutional authorities to decide any change to the statute books.

Opposition figures seized on that observation yesterday and urged President Nicolas Sarkozy’s government to make France the ninth European country to allow same-sex marriage. A majority of French public opinion is in favour of such a move, with the latest poll, by TNS Sofres, showing 51 per cent of respondents approved and 35 per cent were against. In 2006, the agency reported 51 per cent opposition and 45 per cent support.

KAMPALA, Uganda — A prominent Ugandan gay rights activist whose picture was published by an anti-gay newspaper next to the words “Hang Them” was bludgeoned to death. Police said Thursday his sexual orientation had nothing to do with the killing and that one “robber” had been arrested.

Activists were outraged over the death of David Kato, an advocacy officer for the gay rights group Sexual Minorities Uganda. His slaying comes after a year of stepped up threats against gays in Uganda, where a controversial bill has proposed the death penalty for some homosexual acts.

Kato, who had received multiple threats, was found with serious wounds to his head caused by an attack with a hammer at his home late Wednesday in Uganda’s capital, Kampala. Kato later died on the way to hospital.

“David Kato’s death is a tragic loss to the human rights community,” said Maria Burnett, senior Africa researcher at Human Rights Watch. “David had faced the increased threats … bravely and will be sorely missed.”

A Ugandan tabloid newspaper called Rolling Stone listed a number of men they said were homosexuals last year, including Kato. Kato’s picture was published on the front page, along with his name and a headline that said “Hang Them.”..

Kato and two other gay activists sued Rolling Stone over claims that it had violated their constitutional rights to privacy and won the case earlier this month. A judge issued an injunction banning the publication of the identities and personal details of alleged homosexuals.

A police spokesman, Vincent Sekatte, said Kato was killed by robbers who have so far killed more than 10 people in that area in the past two months. He said there was no indication the death was connected to any anti-homosexual sentiment. Kato was hit by a hammer that has been recovered by police, Sekatte said.

Police arrested one suspect, a driver for Kato, Sekatte said. A second suspect is being hunted. That suspect had been hired as a house helper and had recently been released from prison, Sekatte said.

Kato’s lawyer told The Associated Press on Thursday that his client had become noticeably more worried about his safety in the wake of the Rolling Stone publication.

“He was conscious that something could happen,” said John Francis Onyango.

Family, friends and neighbors gathered to mourn at Kato’s house on Thursday. Several women lay on the floor of the living room. The room where he had been killed was closed off by the police. A funeral is planned for Friday.

“I feel very lonely,” said John Mulumba Wasswa, Kato’s older twin brother. “My brother was a very brave person, very courageous.”

Homosexuality is illegal in Uganda and gay men and women face regular harassment. The controversial bill introduced in 2009 and still before the country’s parliament would see the death penalty introduced for certain homosexual acts. The bill prompted international condemnation and hasn’t come up for a vote.

Human Rights Watch called for an urgent investigation into Kato’s murder, saying Thursday that his work as a prominent gay rights campaigner had previously seen him face threats to his personal safety. The organization called on the Ugandan government to offer gay people in the country sufficient protection.

In a statement, the group said that witnesses had told police that Kato was hit twice on the head by an unknown assailant who had been spotted entering his property. The assailant was then seen leaving by vehicle, the statement said.

Frank Mugisha, the chairman of Sexual Minorities Uganda, said he has asked religious and political leaders and media outlets to stop demonizing sexual minorities in Uganda.

“Across the entire country, straight, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex Ugandans mourn the loss of David, a dear friend, colleague, teacher, family member and human rights defender,” said Mugisha.

The introduction of the anti-homosexual bill in 2009 followed a conference in Kampala that was attended by American activists who consider same-gender relationships sinful. The U.S. evangelicals believe gays and lesbians can become heterosexual through prayer and counseling. Some gay Ugandans still resent that American intervention.

“David’s death is a result of the hatred planted in Uganda by U.S evangelicals in 2009,” said Val Kalende, a Ugandan gay rights activist. “The Ugandan government and the so-called U.S evangelicals must take responsibility for David’s blood.”

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 Residents of the area had woken up to see the woman perched dangerously atop the minaret which is under construction as part of ongoing renovation works on the three-storey mosque.

The scene of the incident became a Mecca of sort as residents from the neigbouring communities gathered to witness the incident. Many of the onlookers expressed surprise at how Bolaji managed to climb the mosque tower even as they wondered how the mother of three would be rescued safely.

Meanwhile, there were different sides to the Bolaji saga. While some people claimed she was a witch on a failed mission, and reaping the fruits of her wickedness, others said she was mentally deranged, a claim

Amid the confusion over how to rescue Bolaji safely from her precarious position, a commercial tricyclist, simply identified as Ikechukwu, offered to bring the lady down if his colleagues would compensate him with the sum of N1, 000. There was another angle to the Ikechukwu story, as another account said he had actually placed a bet with some other young men at the scene that he could bring down the woman. The wager was put at N1,000.00.

Ikechukwu, after getting the assurance that he would be given the money began to climb the minaret. Unaware that he was embarking on a dangerous mission, Ikechukwu never returned to claim the money he was promised. He was allegedly pushed down by Bolaji using one of the wooden beams the construction workers had placed in the minaret. He landed, hitting his head on the concrete floor. He died instantly. Following Ikechukwu’s fatal fall, Bolaji was said to have boasted that she would kill more people should they venture to bring her down.

However, the Imam in charge of the mosque, Ganiyu Oyebanjo, was said to have contacted the policemen and men of the State Fire Service. Daily Sun gathered that before the arrival of the crime fighters, a native doctor was said to have made a futile attempt to rescue Bolaji. The medicine man was said to have recited some incantations, cast spell but to no avail. He was reportedly chased away by the crowd. Men of the state fire service on their arrival splashed water on the victim hoping it would scare her, yet she remained adamant.

When Daily Sun arrived the scene Bolaji was seen entertaining her audience. Repeatedly, she would remove her clothes dance around while the malefolk applauded her. When it was obvious that the woman just had to be saved from possible death, able-bodied men comprising mainly of members of the Oodua Peoples Congress (OPC), took over the rescue mission.

They beckoned on her to come down, while she shouted in Yoruba language that they should leave her alone. She began throwing stones at the men who for safety had to wear helmet. Gradually the men climbed up the tower, distracted the lady while another with the aid of a plank pushed her from the minaret to the roof of the mosque. She was eventually brought down from the roof.

The mob attempted to lynch Bolaji but for the quick intervention of the police. She was whisked to Ijesha police station and later moved to a private hospital where she is receiving treatment. Her father lamented that things would not have degenerated to this if his daughter had not been turned back by Yaba Psychiatric hospital. According to him, the hospital had asked that the family should first treat the wounds Oluremi had inflicted on herself before bringing her for admission. The angry mob took to the street, protesting the death of Ikechukwu and calling for the heads of the woman and members of her entire family.

The mob barricaded Ijesha Lawanson Road, disrupting commercial activities and vehicular movements. Some hoodlums who hijacked the protest used the opportunity to snatch peoples mobile phones and handbags. The police eventually dispersed the protesters by firing tear gas canisters.

The Imam, Ganiyu Oyebanjo, expressed shock on how the woman managed to climb the minaret. “I think she was being controlled by a demonic force. She climbed the minaret at about midnight and was brought down around 11:00 am.”

He alleged that worshippers had prevailed on the deceased, Ikechukwu, to wait for the arrival of policemen and the fire fighters but he was adamant, probably because of the N1, 000, allegedly promised him by his colleagues.

Lagos State police spokesman, Mr. Frank Mba, who confirmed the death of Ikechukwu, said the quick intervention of the police saved the lady from being stoned to death by the mob. He said both the police and fire fighters rushed the woman in an ambulance to the police before taking her to the hospital.

He said the body of Ikechukwu had been taken by his family for burial. Mba advised members of the public to always report such incidents to the police rather than resort to jungle justice.

The uprising in Tunisia, which led to the ouster of president Zine El Abidine Ben Ali on January 14, has had a ripple effect across the Arab world:

EGYPT

- January 25 sees the start of unprecedented demonstrations against the regime of President Hosni Mubarak, who has been in power since 1981. The demonstrations are preceded by several people setting themselves on fire. At least 1,000 people are arrested in two days according to a security official.

Seven people have been killed — five demonstrators and two police officers — and dozens injured across the country since Tuesday.

ALGERIA

- Early in January five days of violent protests against high prices result in five people dead and more than 800 injured. The government orders a cut in basic food prices and pledges to continue subsidising wheat, milk and electricity. On January 22 riot police break up a banned pro-democracy rally, leaving around 20 injured. Two lethal self-immolations and seven attempted torching suicides have been reported in Algeria since January 14.

JORDAN

- Thousands of Jordanians take to the streets of Amman and other cities on January 14 to protest soaring commodity prices, unemployment and poverty, calling for the sacking of the government.

On January 16 more than 3,000 Jordanian trade unionists, Islamists and leftists hold a sit-in outside parliament to protest the government's economic policies. On the 21st more than 5,000 people rally after weekly prayers in Amman and other cities.

On Thursday the Islamist opposition calls for protests on Friday and warned it will continue campaigning to force political and economic reform in the kingdom...

SUDAN

- A 25-year-old Sudanese man himself who set himself on fire in a suburb of Khartoum dies from his injuries on Wednesday. Widespread economic and political discontent in north Sudan has led to sporadic protests in recent weeks.

OMAN

- Some 200 Omanis protest on January 17 against high prices and corruption, a rare phenomenon in the Arab Gulf monarchy.

MAURITANIA

- Mauritanian Yacoub Ould Dahoud sets himself on fire in an anti-government protest on January 17 because he is "unhappy with the political situation in the country and angry with the government."

YEMEN

- Yemeni police disperse hundreds of protesters chanting pro-Tunisia slogans at Sanaa University on January 18.

- On Thursday thousands of people stage a mass protest calling on President Ali Abdullah Saleh to quit after being in power since 1978.

ONE of the youth corps members engaged in the ongoing registration exercise in Delta State has drowned in the River Niger.

The corps member, whose identity was not immediately ascertained was posted as one of the ad-hoc staff of the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, to register voters at Oko, a riverine community near Asaba....

The state police command, it was learnt had engaged the services of divers to fish out his corpse. Circumstances leading to the death were still sketchy at press time, but the State Police Public Relations Officer, PPRO, Mr. Charles Muka, told our reporter, yesterday, that "it is true that the corps member drowned in the River Niger. He was posted to Oko community and his clothes were found on the bank of the river."

Also confirming the incident, the INEC's Chief Public Affairs Officer, Mr. Livy Unuibe, said "the Commission is aware of the tragic incident."

Meanwhile, the member representing Oshimili South constituency at the State House of Assembly, Mr. Eugene Okonji has called on the people of Asaba and Oko communities to participate actively in the ongoing registration exercise.

Police say the nature of fraud, much of it involving modern technology, is "constantly evolving"

Fraud costs the UK economy £38bn a year, with more than half of that suffered by the public sector, according to official estimates.

The National Fraud Authority (NFA) said that if the total cost was broken down, every UK adult would be £765 worse off.

The NFA said "a stronger counter-fraud culture" was needed.

Cabinet Office minister Francis Maude said the £21bn cost of public sector fraud could pay for 800 secondary schools or 615,000 nurses...

He said: "Contrary to what many people think, fraud and error is not just confined to benefits and revenue.

"It affects every government department and impacts on the government's ability to deliver better public services, while stripping the civil service of vital resources. We can't and won't allow this to happen any more."

The cost to the private sector was £12bn and charities lost £1.3bn, the NFA reported, while individuals' losses were estimated at £4bn.

Frauds included marketing scams, bogus operators, fake lotteries and online ticketing and rental crimes.

The scale of public sector fraud reflected better reporting procedures, said the researchers, who added that it remained a relatively small proportion of total spending.

Bernard Herdan, of the NFA, said the authority's annual fraud indicator was a "blueprint" for work to tackle the "rising tide" of fraud.

Everyone should make an effort to protect themselves and share information on suspicious behaviour with the authorities, he said.

"We want to develop a stronger counter-fraud culture, which helps to disrupt fraudulent activity across the UK and globally," Mr Herdan said.

Last year's first annual fraud indicator reported a total cost of £30bn, but the NFA said the two reports were not directly comparable because some areas of fraud had been included for the first time this year.

Tobechi Onwuhara (right) at a Dallas nightclub with Ezenwa Onyedebelu.   

FORTUNE -- A luxury suite at the W Hotel in Dallas is as good a place as any to conquer the world. At least it seemed that way in 2007 when Tobechi Onwuhara got the crew together. They'd meet there often, seven or eight of them. Some had nicknames from the Ian Fleming lexicon: C, Q, and E. Others were called Mookie, Orji, Uche. They would spread out on designer sofas and at the wet bar, open three-ring binders, and fire up laptops with hard-to-trace wireless cards. On a nearby table there'd be prepaid cellphones with area codes taped to them. A phone for Southern California. A phone for Northern Virginia. A phone for any place Onwuhara had found the "good money.".

In those days, the good money wasn't hard to find. The housing boom had flooded the country with capital. Lenders were making promiscuous loans to unsophisticated borrowers.

It was an ideal environment for Onwuhara, 27, a brilliant, pug-faced visionary who favored True Religion jeans and Ed Hardy shirts. Looking out over the neon skyline of downtown Dallas, it was easy for the crew to believe his assurances: He'd make them rich. When the sun glinted off one of his $100,000 diamond-encrusted Audemars Piguet watches, who could doubt it? Every few months he would buy a new Maserati or Bentley. He owned expensive properties in Miami, Dallas, and Phoenix. He even had a secret love condo in the W, where scantily clad women visited in such numbers that one bellhop became convinced that the first-generation Nigerian-American was a porn director.

The truth was very different. In his ancestral homeland, Onwuhara might have been a chief. In America he became one of the world's most successful cyberscammers, a criminal genius who used his talents to filet a poorly regulated banking and credit system. In less than three years Onwuhara stole a confirmed $44 million, according to the FBI, which believes the total may be anywhere from $80 million to $100 million. All he needed was an Internet connection and a cellphone.

Onwuhara called it "washing." He'd set up a boiler room in a fancy hotel (the Waldorf-Astoria was another favorite) to wash information on wealthy victims. Then he'd wash bank accounts. One group in his crew would do online research using databases and websites to harvest names, dates of birth, and mortgage information. They'd build profiles of victims for a second group, who would call banks posing as account holders. The callers cadged security information and passwords. Then Onwuhara would breach the accounts and wire funds from them to a network of money mules he had established in Asia. The money would be laundered and wired back to his accounts in the U.S.

"I call it modern-day bank robbery," says FBI special agent Michael Nail. "You can sit at home in your PJs and slippers with a laptop, and you can actually rob a bank."

Onwuhara specialized in hitting home equity lines of credit (HELOCs), the reservoirs of cash that banks make available to homeowners. Once Onwuhara gained access to a HELOC, he could siphon out vast sums in seconds. His weapon was persuasion. It got him enough money to start building a colonnaded fortress in Nigeria; enough to gamble at the high-stakes tables in Vegas casinos all night. Even his accomplices appear not to have known how much he was really pulling down -- not even his beautiful fiancée, Precious Matthews.

"He was playing all of us," says Paula Gipson, a member of the crew. "The banks, us, Precious, everybody."

Conversations with Gipson and other Onwuhara associates, interviews with his family and with investigators, and hundreds of pages of court documents reveal a digital scavenger of extraordinary creativity and guile. Onwuhara orchestrated his swindles using information about homeowners that is widely available online. In fragments, this information is innocuous. When assembled properly, it can be used like an electronic skeleton key to get into almost any credit account. Onwuhara needed only a few short years to rack up an illicit fortune. And he's still at large.

The son of an entrepreneur

The state of Abia in Nigeria stretches from the plains in the north to the riverine flats in the south and resembles, on a map, a giraffe's head. It is a swath of farmland filled with yam fields, cashew orchards, and the sorrowful memories of the Igbo people. The Igbo are Christian, but they jokingly call themselves "black Jews" because so many leave home to establish themselves in business. Abia is their heartland. In the late 1960s it was part of Biafra, a secessionist state with the misfortune of sitting atop vast oil deposits. When the Nigerian civil war erupted, more than a million Biafrans were killed or starved to death. Onwuhara's parents survived.

His father, Doris, was an entrepreneur, one of the first people in Nigeria to import satellite TVs. He built the first major hotel in Abia's capital, Umuahia. Visitors came from miles away to dance in the hotel's nightclub. As Umuahia expanded and land values appreciated, so did Doris's influence. He moved into politics, held office, and managed a successful campaign for a governor of Abia.

Onwuhara's mother, Katherine, was equally accomplished. A lawyer and literary critic, she served as chairwoman of Abia's board of education. The four daughters she had with Doris would go on to be nurses and ministers. But her fifth child, her only son, would be different. He would be American. Katherine was five months pregnant with Tobechi when she left Nigeria to attend school in Houston. "Tobe" was born there in 1979.

Katherine returned to Nigeria when Tobe was still a boy, leaving him with an uncle in Houston. She thought the tight-knit diaspora would look after him. But once Tobe reached his teenage years he started skipping school and getting into trouble. The family shipped him back to Nigeria at age 15 and enrolled him in a boarding school run by the Marist Brothers, a Catholic order known for educational discipline. Onwuhara graduated and enrolled in medical school at Abia State University. He was by all accounts an exceptionally clever, shy boy who spoke infrequently but eloquently. He longed to return to the U.S.

In 1999, Onwuhara moved back to Texas. He rented an apartment in Dallas and took classes at Brookhaven College. He found a job as a loan officer at Capital One (COF, Fortune 500). He learned how banks worked from the inside, studying documents and procedures. (Capital One declines to discuss Onwuhara.) Then he turned to crime. With the help of a friend who had connections at Discover Financial Services (DFS, Fortune 500), Onwuhara cooked up driver's licenses and credit cards under the names of real customers, according to court documents. He bought electronics at CompUSA. He hit up restaurants and clubs. That was how he met Precious Matthews, a pretty Baylor student majoring in speech communication. Matthews worked as a waitress; Onwuhara was a regular, flirtatious customer. When Precious warned him the establishment was suspicious of his transactions, Onwuhara was smitten. The two started dating and were soon engaged.

In 2002, Onwuhara was arrested three times in Texas for credit card fraud. The police raided his apartment and found incriminating evidence. Onwuhara had mastered some techniques of identity theft and stolen more than $100,000 with an accomplice, according to a statement he gave to the authorities, but he was still a fledgling criminal making silly mistakes. Chief among them was going into a store or a bank in person to commit fraud. He would learn later to distance himself from a crime and leave few traces of his involvement. But not yet.

When the heat in Texas got too great, Onwuhara left for Seattle to meet Abel Nnabue, a Nigerian friend known as "Q." On Dec. 12, 2002, the two men drove to a bank in Lynwood, Wash., their wallets packed with fake IDs and unauthorized credit cards. Nnabue waited in their gold Plymouth Neon rental car while Onwuhara entered the bank to try for a $5,000 cash advance. When the bank called the police, Onwuhara bolted outside and into the Neon, just as a cruiser arrived. Nnabue sped away on wet streets, gunning the Neon through stop signs. Two more cop cars joined the chase; Onwuhara threw his wallet out the window. The police cornered the men in the parking lot of a Korean church. Onwuhara fled on foot, and a K-9 unit found him hiding in a pond. In May 2003 he was sentenced to 12 months in prison.

"I'm deeply and sincerely sorry," he told a federal judge. "You'll never again see me in any kind of trouble with the law or hear anything negative about me from this day forward."

By the time Onwuhara got out of prison, the housing market was bubbling.

"He made it thunderstorm."

The Dallas Gentlemen's Club is one of Texas's bawdiest fleshpots, a highway-side warehouse of grinding booty and slack-jawed marks. The club attracts big spenders -- athletes, rap stars -- but Onwuhara made them look like flunkies. When he walked in, the strippers would beeline for him, their cellphones lighting up as they called their off-duty friends: "Get over here! T just showed up!" They knew what to expect -- $650 bottles of Cristal, $2,000 stacks of ones for his entourage, $50,000 in a briefcase he'd empty out. During a single song, he'd drop so much money the girls needed two more songs to scoop all the bills off the floor. He'd repeat this performance several times a week.

"He didn't just make it rain," one dancer would later tell the authorities. "He made it thunderstorm."

At the end of the night, Onwuhara liked to idle outside the club in his $300,000 Rolls-Royce Phantom waiting for the girls to exit, according to interviews with FBI investigators. When he saw one he liked, he'd simply point. She was coming back to the W. If women were his weakness, strippers were his vice. But Precious would eventually find out. Still engaged, she and Onwuhara had moved in together.

The studious, soft-spoken Tobe had disappeared. Onwuhara, now known as "T," was the owner of S.W.A.T. Up Entertainment, a rap label; a deluxe apartment in Dallas and a mansion in Miramar, Fla.; and a diamond chain the size of a tow rope that he wore around his neck. Dangling at the end of the chain was a grinning mini-T clutching sacks of money like a cartoon bank robber, which is what Onwuhara increasingly resembled.

In hindsight, it seems obvious that a savvy cybercriminal would target HELOCs. From 1998 to 2007, the percentage of homeowners with HELOCs jumped from 10.6% to 18.4%. Credit balances soared. All the information a scammer needed was available online. The trick was cobbling it together. Onwuhara taught himself how.

Using ListSource, a direct-marketing company, he'd collect mortgage information on married couples with million-dollar homes. They qualified for high HELOCs. He'd find lease or loan papers through public databases and pay sites, then use Photoshop to grab homeowners' signatures off documents. Next, he'd build a profile of the victim by paying for a background search through skip-tracing sites. That would give him birth dates, Social Security numbers, names of relatives, previous addresses, employment histories, and more. To get a mother's maiden name he would use Ancestry.com.

Profile in hand, he would run a credit check on victims through annualcreditreport.com, a website set up by the big three credit-reporting agencies. Onwuhara had discovered a flaw in the Experian portion of the site, which screened users with a personalized security question and several multiple-choice answers. Users had to click on the correct answer to proceed. But when Onwuhara refreshed his browser, he found that the site replaced certain answers with new ones. Clearly, these were red herrings. Onwuhara knew the correct answer to the security question would appear persistently on screen as he refreshed. Enough refreshing would eventually reveal the true answer and allow Onwuhara to access reports. (A spokesman for Experian says that the company is cooperating with law enforcement authorities and that "since this case we have refined our security protocol.") The reports provided Onwuhara with details about the victim's HELOC. He preferred credit union HELOCs: They were soft targets.

At this point artistry came into play. Onwuhara used a phone service called SpoofCard to make any number he wanted appear in a caller ID. This was key to his scam. With SpoofCard, Onwuhara could fool financial institutions into thinking his call originated from the victim's phone. Onwuhara knew the system. He knew the questions he'd get. Usually he had the answers, along with account numbers, balances, and passwords. Altering his gravelly voice like a professional actor, he could switch ethnicity, age, and accent on a whim. A customer service rep was easy prey.

Once in, Onwuhara would wire HELOC money out of the country. Financial institutions faxed wire transfer requests to his e-fax account, which converted faxes to e-mails. After attaching Photoshopped signatures and phony headers, he would send the forms back. The money would be wired to banks in Asia where mules that Onwuhara had recruited would withdraw the money, take a cut, and redeposit the funds into other accounts or with hawalas, informal money brokers who ask few questions.

Finally, the money would be wired back to the U.S. into accounts Onwuhara controlled. At one point he received a 40-million-euro transfer. He would further launder the money by depositing it in casinos and cashing out in checks days later. He would also buy ultra-expensive luxury cars, drive them for a few months, then ship them to Nigeria, where they would be resold at a steep markup. Onwuhara was clearing about $7 million every two weeks, according to the FBI.

The mastermind shared few details of the scam, even with his inner circle. Precious Matthews and Paula Gipson knew the most, mainly because Onwuhara couldn't impersonate women on the phone. He needed them to pose as female account holders and had to give them more information. Nnabue gathered mortgage information and loan documents. Ezenwa ("E") Onyedebelu, a promising young student from Dallas whom Onwuhara had tapped as his protégé, laundered money. Henry Obilo, a hulking pre-med student who doubled as Onwuhara's bodyguard, specialized in Bank of America (BAC, Fortune 500) information.

Onwuhara doled out profits according to a person's role. Callers received more than researchers, and members of the crew competed to work the phones. If they weren't slick enough, Onwuhara bumped them back to online scutwork. All the money, all the information, ran through him. He never stored sensitive data on his computer, keeping it instead on a flash drive he could easily destroy. But no matter the precautions he took to cover his tracks, something was bound to go awry. Sometimes you just hit the wrong man.

The net tightens

On Dec. 8, 2007, Robert "Duke" Short sat down in front of his PC. It was around 10 a.m., a few hours before Short was to take his wife to their regular weekend lunch near their home in Alexandria, Va. Short wanted to check his accounts at the U.S. Senate Federal Credit Union. A former U.S. Treasury agent, Short arrived in D.C. from South Carolina as the Treasury Department's national chief of investigations. He got into politics and became Strom Thurmond's chief of staff. He spent 30 years on Capitol Hill. He was, in other words, the wrong man to hit.

That morning, Short couldn't log into his account. His password had been changed, and the credit union was closed. Short called in on Monday. When he accessed his account, he saw that $280,000 was missing, most of it from his high-limit HELOC account.

"They said this money was transferred to Korea," he recalls. "They said, 'Are you sure you didn't do that?' I said, 'Listen, if that amount of money was transferred to Korea, I would know.'"

The credit union would protect Short from any losses -- in fact, almost all of Onwuhara's victims eventually had their monetary losses covered by their financial institutions, although they still had to cope with the shock of identity theft and ruined credit ratings.

Short called the Alexandria police department, the Secret Service, and the FBI. Within days an investigation was underway.

The investigators' first clue came from the IP addresses used to log in to Short's account. The FBI determined that someone had called the credit union to reset Short's password, sounding like an older white man. The caller claimed that the auto login to his account had vanished after his son had set up a new computer for him. He was convincing. But after the password was reset, the caller logged in to Short's account while still on the phone. The FBI now had a precise IP address to track. It belonged to a Verizon Wireless Internet card registered to a fictitious name and a real address in Miramar, Fla., just a few doors down from Onwuhara's mansion, a fact the FBI would discover later.

Onwuhara bought wireless Internet service with prepaid debit cards, making him virtually untraceable. But he still had to go to a Verizon store to make purchases. Two deposits had been made to the Verizon account tied to the Short crime. Both occurred in Plano, Texas. When investigators pulled security video from the store, they saw three men at a kiosk. One was wearing an Ed Hardy hoodie covered in rhinestone skulls. Investigators began looking for names.

They knew their thief had intercepted a call from the credit union to Short to confirm the wire transfer. Onwuhara had duped Short's phone company into remotely forwarding calls to Onwuhara's cell, a tactic he used often. But it backfired when investigators obtained a list of phones to which customers' home numbers were being forwarded. On the list, they found numerous prepaid phone numbers. Calls were being made from these numbers to banks across the country and to 1-800 numbers belonging to SpoofCard. These were the scammers' virtual fingerprints.

An FBI search warrant produced 1,500 recorded calls connected to the suspicious SpoofCard accounts. (SpoofCard says that it doesn't routinely record calls made over its system, but that callers may opt to do so.) The tapes were a jackpot for investigators. "There were so many different voices," says FBI special agent Hadley Etienne. "They all knew what to say. They all had it down."

For months investigators listened to the tapes, hoping for a break. "You know how it is when you're reading a good book and you're just reading and reading and reading," says Michael Nail, the lead FBI investigator. "It was like that. I was at home one weekend listening to calls. And this one call came up."

In it, Onwuhara does a pitch-perfect impersonation of a middle-aged white doctor calling in a prescription to a CVS (CVS, Fortune 500) pharmacy. The prescription was for Valtrex, a herpes medication. The patient was Tobe Onwuhara. At last, investigators had a name. They pulled a Texas DMV photo of Onwuhara. It matched the image of the man in the hoodie from the Verizon video. Their quarry was in reach, but they needed more evidence.

In April 2008, agents detained Onwuhara, Nnabue, Matthews, and Obilo at J.F.K. International Airport in New York. The group was flying home after a vacation in Nigeria. They had stayed at the Ritz in London during their stopover. Onwuhara had even brought his diamond chain. Investigators told the scammers they were being stopped as part of a routine travel check. Their real purpose was to confirm the voices and nicknames they'd heard on the tapes and the phone numbers used in the calls. Now they would begin to monitor Onwuhara's phone and station cars in the street outside his Miramar mansion to conduct surveillance.

The crew starts to unravel

If the airport stop rattled Onwuhara, he didn't show it. He still ate fish and rice at Pappadeaux's in Dallas. He still threw parties at the chic Ghost Bar on the roof of the W. But nerves were fraying within his crew, according to Paula Gipson. Nnabue complained about his pay. Gipson agonized over her crimes yet justified them by saying she was only hurting the banks. Matthews spiraled into a depression. She enjoyed the finer things Onwuhara provided her -- shopping sprees at high-end stores, weekends in the best hotels, a house with a new pool -- but their relationship had grown combustible. She and Onwuhara fought. After one argument he stormed through the Miramar house and smashed the screens of the plasma TVs.

It was around this time that Onwuhara grew suspicious that law enforcement might be on to him. FBI agents had placed both a pen register and a trap-and-trace device on his phone, which let them record all outgoing and incoming numbers. Onwuhara somehow found out. When he called Cingular/AT&T (T, Fortune 500), his cellphone carrier, the company "accidentally" revealed the name and number of the FBI technician tracking him, according to an FBI affidavit in support of a criminal complaint. But people who know Onwuhara don't think it was an accident.

"He has a way of getting people to tell him everything," Gipson says.

On July 30, 2008, he destroyed his cell and switched to another phone the FBI wasn't monitoring.

The FBI didn't know where he'd gone. Was he making an escape? Emergency arrest warrants were obtained. Two days later, on a perfect South Florida night, the agents watching Onwuhara's house noticed a commotion. Matthews ran outside, followed by a familiar-looking man. Matthews sped away in her Acura. The man followed in a black BMW X6 registered to Onwuhara. The agents gave chase as the cars rocketed down the highway at more than 100 mph.

"I got some calls," Nail says. "They were like, 'Hey, they're speeding. Should we stop them now?'"

Nail consulted Etienne and the assistant U.S. attorney on the case. They decided to make the arrest. The agents on the ground followed the speeding cars to the Hard Rock Casino in Fort Lauderdale. The Acura and the BMW screeched to a halt at the curb in front of the casino. The drivers rushed inside, where local police detained them. The man from the BMW wasn't Onwuhara but rather his protégé, Ezenwa Onyedebelu. In the seconds before the FBI arrived with handcuffs to make the arrest, Matthews whipped out her cellphone and fired off a text: "Leave now. They got us."

Somewhere inside the Hard Rock, maybe at one of his beloved craps tables, one of the greatest cyberscammers in history looked up from his phone, calmly headed for a back door, and hailed a cab. Then he melted into the night. He hasn't been seen since.

Floating between worlds

"I was taught by my dad not to be a follower," Onwuhara once said.

He is following his own treacherous path now, one that few have charted. A most-wanted fugitive, he has a $25,000 bounty on his head.

Almost all of Onwuhara's co-conspirators were indicted and pleaded guilty. Precious Matthews was sentenced to 51 months in prison. Daniel "Orji" Orjinta got 42 months. Abel Nnabue had his sentence reduced to 27 months after cooperating with prosecutors. Paula Gipson and Ezenwa Onyedebelu helped prosecutors and had their sentences reduced to 15 months and 14 months, respectively. Only Henry Obilo pleaded not guilty. He was sentenced to 88 months in prison.

As for Onwuhara, the FBI claims to have no clue where he is. One accomplice swears he's still in America. Maybe he's floating between worlds in cyberspace, probing for new cracks in new systems. "The boy is an enigma," says one of his sisters. "What can I tell you?

AS her husband, Dim Chukwuemeka Odumegwu-Ojukwu, recuperates from a debilitating stroke in a London hospital, President Goodluck Jonathan yesterday approved the appointment of the former Biafran warlord’s wife, Bianca, as one of his aides.

Odumegwu-Ojukwu is a chieftain of All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA).

Besides Mrs. Odumegwu-Ojukwu, the President also approved the appointment of three other aides. The appointments, according to his spokesperson, Ima Niboro, takes immediate effect. Mrs. Odumegwu-Ojukwu was named Senior Special Assistant, Diaspora Affairs; Kingsley Kuku is the Special Adviser, Niger Delta Affairs; Ambassador Zakari Ibrahim, Coordinator, Anti-Terrorism and Mr. Oyewole Olugbenga Leke, Senior Special Assistant, Maritime Services...

Our Question still. To Serve your Country or to Serve your Husband .Ask what you can do for your Country and Not what your country can do for you . JFK

Who will now Aid the Ailing Warlord in these troubling times while his wife is aiding the President?

The Independent National Electoral Commission, last Tuesday evening, discovered four voter registration centres deep inside the Nziko forest at Nteje in Anambra State. The deputy governor of Anambra State, Emeka Sibeudu and the state resident electoral commissioner, Chukwuemeka Onukogu, led the team that made the discovery based on security reports made available to the governor, Peter Obi.

The REC said it was painful to discover four centres serving no one in the middle of a thick forest when there were not enough machines for potential voters in places like Awka, Onitsha, Nnewi, Adazi, and Agulu. The centres, located within the vicinity of a shrine, are at least a 40-minute drive from the nearest residential area. It was discovered that the registration officers, mainly National Youth Service Corps members sat idly, looking at the machines, with no one in sight to register.

The deputy governor who expressed his shock at the location of the registration centres said: “We have shortfalls in machines. But in the forest here, there are four machines lying idle. All the people we met here are not up to 10. But if you go to some other places, you will find thousands of people waiting to be registered. This, I can assure you, is part of the rascality of the past which the present government under Mr. Peter Obi is trying hard to stamp out of the state.”

According to him, these kinds of registration centres were used to commit electoral fraud.

In his reaction the resident electoral commissioner, Mr. Onukogu, said he had only heard of these types of voting centres.

“Today I have seen one,” he said. “I am sad that there are four machines wasting here, whereas there are no machines in Onitsha, Eke Awka, Ozubulu, Nnewi and parts of Anaocha where thousands of people are waiting to be registered.”

He said the four centres put together had registered only about 200 voters since the exercise started 10 days ago, when the same machines would have registered many people had they been located in densely populated areas..

“The irregular location of the centres also poses grave risks to the registration officers and the machines. How will I evacuate men and machines in the event of danger?” Mr. Onukogu asked.

He alleged that the centres must have been secured by an influential politician from the area. He said he would take away three machines and leave one behind. But he added that he would need to meet with the registration officials on the matter in his office before taking action. But Mr. Onukogu admitted that he was constrained by the fact that the “floating registration centres” deep in the forest were documented from the Abuja headquarters of INEC and assured it would be corrected.

THE Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), on Tuesday evening, discovered four voter registration centres in Nziko forest, at Nteje in Oyi Local Government Area of Anambra State.

The deputy governor of the state, Mr Emeka Sibeudu and the state Resident Electoral Commissioner (REC), Professor Chukwuemeka Onukogu, led the team that made the discovery, acting on security reports made available to the governor, Mr Peter Obi.

Professor Onukaogu said it was "painful to discover four centres serving nobody in the middle of a thick forest when there were no enough machine for potential voters in places like Awka, Onitsha, Nnewi, Adazi, Agulu and others."

The REC said "I have heard of floating/flying polling booths. Today, I have seen one. I am sad that there are four machines wasting here, whereas there are no machines in Onitsha, Eke Awka, Ozubulu, Nnewi and parts of Anaocha, where thousands of people are waiting to be registered."

The centres, which took 40 minutes drive to access from the nearest residential area in Nteje, were located within the vicinity of a shrine with the registration officers, mainly corps members, virtually doing nothing, as there were no potential voters in sight.

The four centres together had registered only about 200 voters since the exercise started 10 days ago, while the irregular location of the centres also posed a risk to the registration officers and the machines.

He said he would take away three machines and leave one behind, adding that he would need to meet with the registration officials on the matter in his office before taking action.

The deputy governor expressed shock at the discovery, saying "we have shortfalls in machines but in the forest here, there are four machines lying idle. All the people we met here are not up to 10. But if you go to some other places, you will find thousands of people waiting to be registered.

Meanwhile, an attempt by two officials of the INEC in Edo State to re-capture the data of the Esama of Benin, Chief Gabriel Igbinedion, at his residence, in Benin City, the state capital, has landed them in police net.

The development apparently prompted the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in the state to call for the prosecution of all persons involved in alleged conduct of voter registration at the residence of Chief Igbinedion.

The Edo State vice chairman of the PDP, Owere Dickson Imasogie, who stood in for the state chairman, Chief Dan Orbih, at a press conference on Tuesday , said the supposed culprits must be brought to book, as a way of assuring the electorate that the 2011 elections would be free and fair.

The two INEC voter registration officials were arrested for allegedly abandoning their registration unit at the Civil Service Training Centre, GRA, Benin City and went to Chief Igbinedion's residence to re-register him after the Direct Data Capture (DDC) machine failed to capture his data during an earlier registration at the registration unit.

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Nigerian Tribune gathered that Chief Igbinedion had, last week Saturday, gone to the registration unit in the area, near his residence, to be registered, but after his data was fed into the DDC machine, the machine shut down as a result of low battery, and the Benin high chief was asked to go with the assurance that he would be issued his voter card on Monday, which was two days ago.

It was also learnt that on Monday when Chief Igbine-dion was expecting to receive his voter card, two INEC officials walked into his residence and requested to re-capture him again, because their system malfunctioned and, therefore, they could not recover his data from the system.

However, Mr Lucky Eboh-Onokwe, an aide to Chief Igbinedion, in a statement on Tuesday, debunked what he described as the rumour doing the rounds as it affected the Benin high chief.

According to Eboh-Onokwe, Chief Igbinedion went to the polling centre close his residence on Saturday, "did all the registration formalities and left in the hope of collecting his voter card the next day, as it is the practice with the INEC officials.

He said Chief Igbinedion was approached on Monday that they were unable to print out his voter card due to malfunctioning of their machine and would, therefore, want re-do the exercise."

When contacted, the Public Relations Officer of the Edo State police command, Mr Peter Ogboi, said the police were working in conjunction with the INEC, adding that it was only INEC that could establish if there was any wrongdoing in the registration process and inform the police officially.

Abiola

But when we had a meeting in Abeokuta, they made it clear that there would not be any primary. They said they would just handpick candidates and submit same to the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC). And whoever is not picked should wait for an appointment or something like that.

And I think if that happens, I would move to a different party. And the different party I could move to is General Muhammadu Buhari’s party. The Congress for Progressive Change (CPC). Over the years, like in 2003 and 2007, I was part of General Buhari’s campaign train. He is somebody I love, somebody I admire and somebody I campaigned for. It is not that the party is strong in the south west, but since I could not get a fair deal in the ACN, I decided to go back to General Buhari’s party.

Why in politics?

We have general problem in Nigeria from Maiduguri to Port-Harcourt, Sokoto to Lagos and Enugu to Jos. There is problem of unemployment, economic problems, and leadership problem as well as problem of infrastructure. I hold the view that by 2011, every capable hand, every competent hand who have love and passion for this country should come out to salvage the country together.

But when you don’t have internal democracy in the political parties, the problems will persist because those people who are not popular, who are not competent and who don’t have wide support among the populace would be at the helms of affairs. And sadly they would not be able to perform because people would not have confidence in them. And when you don’t understand democracy, you would not understand the language of democracy and how democracy works to bring about dividends of democracy.

How long have you been in politics?

Every human being is a politician. It is not when you start running for an elective position that will make you a politician. We have been playing politics at home. We play politics with our wives, we play with our children and we play politics with our parents too at home. We are all political animals.

But I became more active in politics when my father was running for an election. Though I was young then, I can say I was part of the campaign team. I was following them up and down during the campaigns, watching what they were doing. And when there was annulment and the struggle to actualise the mandate ensued, I was with my mum, going up and down with her to see what could be done.

I was part of the marches to protest. Even in America, I was part of the protesters at the Nigerian Embassy. I even lobbied some American government officials to put some kind of sanctions on Nigerian government to force it to de-annul the election and so on. I am in politics with my roles to that extent. So in 2003 and 2007, I became part of Buhari campaign team in the south west, I think with Chief Olu Falae as the Head of the Campaign team. You can see now that I have been in politics but just that I am now fully in it as a candidate.

Why N’Assembly as a starter?

I want to start from the Federal level because some of the problems facing the country always come from the Federal government. Take for instance, the problem of insecurity is from the centre. Take a look also at roads like Lagos-Ibadan, Benin-Ore roads. They are Federal roads. Other examples are budgets and exchange rates and other stuff that are handled at the centre. If we can solve the problem from the top, other warehouses would fall in line. So, going to the House of Representatives will give me the opportunity to assist in solving the country’s problems from the centre.

Are you trying to step into your late father’s shoes?

No, no, no. You see, every human being has his own destiny. You can’t say you want to copy some one else life exactly. You should be able to have your own destiny. I agree my parents played politics for the enthronement of democracy that would make everybody in Nigeria enjoy. They did till they sacrificed their lives for genuine democracy to have roots in Nigeria.

Although that has not happened, we should remember that every thing in life is a process. We are in the process of achieving that. You know you can not get to paradise overnight. You have to work towards it. Basically, if we don’t have democracy in its real sense now, we should remember we are no more being ruled by the military. It is an advancement. We are progressing on that road since we have held three elections in this country. We hope we wont go back to dictatorship in this country.

The pro democracy war my parents fought and died for was a collective fight along with a lot of people. And with the elections we have held in this country, it means we are progressing.

What is required now is that the little achievements we have so far recorded must be sustained and nurtured. We hope that the coming election would be better than what we had in 2007. We hope that the democratic process as well as performance of our elected officers across board would be better.

What is your take on professionals in politics?

If you check all the people that have moved forward, you will realise that they put their best forward to lead them. You don’t have people that have nothing doing leading them. They won’t put people who don’t understand why the country is in bad shape in office. Those who don’t know why Naira is devalued when our crude oil is selling at high rate. Or those who don’t know the impact of devalued Naira on the economy.

I remember in the 1980s when naira went one-to-one dollar, one to two and one to three dollar, people started shouting. When it went from one to five to one to ten, people started screaming. When it moved from one to ten to one dollar to N22, people were wondering what was happening!

When Obasanjo took over it was one dollar to 87. Before you knew what was happening it went to one dollar to N117. Later it went to one dollar to N135. Now, it is one dollar to N155! You can imagine what is going on here. We need those who can identify the problem and proffer solution to it.

Also you look into the high rate of the current expenditure when the budget is currently going to the current expenditure. Our crude oil is basically spent on paying salaries and not in developing infrastructure. These are some of the issues I am going to the National Assembly to address by the grace of God.

What has being Abiola’s son done for you?

Well, I don’t ask from human being any special favour because I am MKO Abiola’s son. My parents have done their work and have gone back to their God and I pray that God gives them their rewards. I don’t seek unnecessary favour like saying, Lekan Abiola wants to contest and so, anybody that wants to contest should get out of the way. That was why I told the party leaders at a meeting in Abeokuta that, there should be primaries where all the card carrying members would decide who they want to fly the ACN flags.

It is not because of me.

What about those who are not Abiola’s sons like sons of Okada man, sons of artisan and peasant farmers and others like them?

I have gone round to meet people and campaign. They were supportive of my aspiration and looking forward to having a good primary.

When my father was contesting in 1993, they did not say, oh, MKO Abiola is coming, let everybody get out of the way for him. He fought a good fight since he had the Kingibes and Atikus to content with. It was a big fight in Jos. My father did not get his ticket of the SDP on a platter of gold. So I don’t expect my own to be on a platter of gold also.

So, even, if I was the one so handpicked, I would not want it. However, it has not discourage me in any way. It does not worth it, big or small. I am sure, anything God says is mine, In Sha Allah, I will have it. If God says on May 29, 2011, I will be sworn-in as House of Representatives member, nobody can stop it. When one door closes Allah will open another bigger one. So, I can’t be discouraged. I hope In sha Allah, I will be successful.