431 phones forfeited under a 2006 fraud law: EFCC's own releases on the Victoria Island 'HK' case give three phone counts, two raid dates and two charge sheets

On Tuesday, 29 September 2026, Justice Deinde Dipeolu of the Federal High Court in Lagos ordered the final forfeiture of 431 mobile phones to the Federal Government of Nigeria. That is according to a statement the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) published on its website on 30 September. The release names EFCC counsel Hannatu Kofarnaisa as the lawyer who moved the application. It says the court had made an interim forfeiture order on 8 July 2026, and that the commission published a notice in The Guardian newspaper on 11 August 2026. It also says that "no individual or entity came forward to contest the forfeiture within the period stipulated by the court." We have not seen the order itself or the court file. What follows rests on the commission's own published statements, which we downloaded and read in full from its news database.

The release rests the order on one statute. An affidavit by EFCC operative Christopher Augustine said the 431 devices were "reasonably suspected to be proceeds of unlawful activities and were therefore subject to forfeiture pursuant to Section 17 of the Advance Fee Fraud and Other Related Offences Act, 2006." That is the older advance-fee fraud law. It is not the Cybercrimes (Prohibition, Prevention, etc) Act 2015, which was the law in the main charge against the people the release calls convicts, and it is not the Proceeds of Crime (Recovery and Management) Act 2022. Several news reports on the order also said the application was brought as an action in rem under Section 44(2)(b) of the 1999 Constitution. That detail is not in the EFCC release we read, so we treat it as a press account (grade B).

The phones are tied to the raid the EFCC made at 7 Oyin Jolayemi Street, Victoria Island, Lagos, in December 2024. The commission first announced it on 16 December 2024. That release said 792 suspects were arrested "on Tuesday, December 10, 2024" in a seven-storey building called Big Leaf Building. It said the arrested included "148 Chinese, 40 Filipinos, two Kharzartans, one Pakistani, one Indonesian". Those foreign nationals add up to 192. If the 792 total is right, 600 of those arrested were not in that list (our arithmetic, grade C). The new affidavit, as the 30 September release reports it, describes the same operation in different numbers: "more than 700 individuals, including about 500 Nigerians, 148 Chinese, 40 Filipinos and other foreign nationals." A release from October 2025 on the deportations gives a third number, 759 suspects arrested and prosecuted.

The raid date also changes across the commission's releases. The December 2024 announcement, the April 2025 interim forfeiture release, the October 2025 deportation release and this week's release all give 10 December 2024. Three releases about the trial of the alleged ringleader say the arrests happened "on December 19, 2024" in an operation "tagged 'Eagle Flush Operation'": the first witness on 23 June 2025, the second witness on 1 July 2025, and the conviction on 11 February 2026. The published record does not explain the difference. It may be a typing error repeated from release to release, but we cannot tell that from the documents.

The count of seized phones has changed the most. On 25 April 2025 the EFCC reported that Justice Dipeolu, the judge who made this week's order, had made an interim forfeiture order on 23 April 2025 over 73 categories of property recovered from the Victoria Island operation. The order was against Genting International Co. According to that release, the items included "1,596 computers/laptops; 4,091 mobile phones; 350 foreign SIM cards, and 3,399 Nigerian SIM cards". The SIM cards were broken down as 1,122 MTN, 316 9mobile, 1,277 Airtel and 684 Glo. Those four figures add up to 3,399, as stated. The judge also directed that the order be published and gave interested parties 14 days to show cause. Among the roughly 2,500 releases the commission's news database returned to us, going back to July 2023, we found none that reported a final order on those 73 categories.

On 11 February 2026 the EFCC reported a different list. In its release on the conviction of two Chinese nationals, it said the prosecution had asked the court to forfeit to the Federal Government "all items recovered during investigation from the four properties listed in the charge (Items 1-135)". That list began with "1,596 mobile phones, 2,120 office chairs, 544 office tables, 194 routers, 43 computer systems". The number 1,596 appears in both releases. In April 2025 it was the count of computers and laptops. In February 2026 it was the count of mobile phones. The office tables also differ: 558 in April 2025 and 544 in February 2026. The February release does not say whether the court granted that request.

The 431 phones in this week's order are fewer than both earlier counts: about a tenth of the 4,091 phones in the April 2025 interim order, and about a quarter of the 1,596 phones in the February 2026 request (our arithmetic, grade C). The 30 September release does not say whether the 431 phones are part of the 4,091, whether they were seized at the same address, or why a separate application under a different statute was needed. From the public record we cannot establish whether the other phones are still under an interim order, have already been forfeited under an order the commission did not publicise, or were returned.

The two releases also describe the criminal case in different ways. The February 2026 release says Justice Daniel Osiagor of the Federal High Court in Ikoyi convicted Huang Haoyu, also known as Ken, and An Hongxu on 11 February 2026. Both changed their pleas to guilty and each received "a cumulative term of 46 years' imprisonment" with an option of fine of N56,000,000. The third defendant, Friday Audu, kept his plea of not guilty, and his trial was adjourned to 29 April 2026. The 30 September release says "Huang and GICL pleaded guilty to the charges and were subsequently convicted and sentenced by the court." That wording names the company, Genting International Company Limited, but not An Hongxu. The February release does not say that the company entered a plea.

The charge is also counted differently. In June and July 2025 the EFCC described Huang, Audu, An Hongxu and Genting International Co. Ltd as "standing trial on an 11-count charge bordering on cyber-terrorism, internet fraud and money laundering". The amount was given as N3,407,824,740.78 and $2,562,203. The February 2026 conviction release gives the same amounts but calls it "a seven- count charge". The 30 September release also says seven counts, and lists them as "cyber terrorism, possession of fraudulent documents, failure to declare activities to the Special Control Unit Against Money Laundering (SCUML), illegal foreign exchange transactions and money laundering." The count quoted in both earlier releases was brought under Section 27 of the Cybercrimes Act and made punishable under Section 18 of that Act. The public releases do not say whether the charge was amended between July 2025 and February 2026.

It matters who was convicted of what. On the commission's own account, two named people, Huang Haoyu and An Hongxu, were convicted on their guilty pleas in February 2026. The October 2025 deportation release says 192 foreign nationals from the operation were "convicted and sentenced" and then deported between 15 August and 16 October 2025. Those nationals came from China, the Philippines, Tunisia, Malaysia, Pakistan, Kyrgyzstan and Timor-Leste. The EFCC published separate releases on dozens of those convictions between June and July 2025. We found no release reporting that Friday Audu has been convicted, so he remains a defendant who pleaded not guilty. The about 500 Nigerians described in the affidavit have not, on anything we read, been convicted as a group. The 30 September release itself says the operation "allegedly" involved Nigerian youths.

The forfeiture order also does not depend on a conviction. The EFCC's own summary of the affidavit says the 431 phones were "reasonably suspected" to be proceeds of unlawful activity, which is the civil standard the application relied on. The headline of the release calls the owners "Chinese Convicts". The text is more careful: it says the phones "were linked to Chinese cyber-fraud operators who had previously been convicted by the court". The release does not say which convicted people, if any, owned the specific devices. Nobody contested the application, so the court decided it on the commission's affidavit alone.

The same statute appears in other EFCC work this year. On 5 June 2026 the commission reported an interim forfeiture order by a Federal High Court judge in Maiduguri over a bank account and two phones, a Tecno Camon 40 Pro and an iPhone 17 Pro Max, belonging to a man "under investigation" for criminal misappropriation. The pattern in these releases is that phones and other devices are forfeited to the Federal Government, usually without opposition, on suspicion set out in an affidavit, and often long before or long after the criminal case. Before this week, the release record gave no public figure for what the Victoria Island property is worth or where it is being held. This week's release does not give one either.

There is also a small spelling difference in the documents. The 30 September release calls the judge "Justice Dehinde Dipeolu" at first and "Justice Dipeolu" later. The April 2025 release, about the same judge in the same case family, spells the name "Deinde". We use the April spelling. Neither spelling affects the order.

What is established: the EFCC has published a statement that a Federal High Court judge in Lagos ordered the final forfeiture of 431 mobile phones on 29 September 2026 under Section 17 of the Advance Fee Fraud and Other Related Offences Act 2006, and that the application was not contested. The commission's releases also establish that two Chinese nationals were convicted on guilty pleas in February 2026 and that 192 foreign nationals were deported in 2025 after convictions.

What is not established: we do not know from the public record whether the April 2025 interim order on 4,091 phones and 1,596 computers was ever made final, or whether the February 2026 request covering 1,596 phones was granted. We do not know how the 431 phones relate to either count. The documents do not explain why the raid is dated 10 December in some releases and 19 December in others, or why the charge went from 11 counts to seven. We have not seen the court's orders, the affidavit or the Guardian notice, only the EFCC's summaries of them. We have asked for none of these documents yet. The next step is to request the enrolled orders from the Federal High Court registry in Ikoyi and to put these questions to the EFCC's media office.

What this rests on

The EFCC's own published releases (grade A for what the commission states; they are the commission's summaries, not the court orders themselves). Press reports on the Section 44(2)(b) point are grade B. The totals 192, 600 and the fractions of the phone counts are our arithmetic (grade C).

What this does not establish

The court orders, affidavit and Guardian notice themselves were not seen. We do not know whether the April 2025 interim order (4,091 phones) was made final, whether the February 2026 request (1,596 phones) was granted, how the 431 phones relate to either, why the raid date differs (10 vs 19 December 2024), or whether the charge was amended from 11 counts to seven. We found no release reporting a conviction of Friday Audu or of Nigerian recruits as a group.