As Nigerians prepared to call it at night late on Friday June 2, 2017, news filtered in that pop singer, Dammy Krane was arrested on several counts related to theft in the American city of Miami.
Before long his mugshot had circulated widely across Nigerian social media space.
The news was received with shock and disbelief, with many of his fans insisting that it was a publicity stunt for his next single.
Some even went as far as saying that the singer (real name Oyindamola Johnson-Hunga) was too fresh to have been actually arrested.
A halfhearted attempt via his Twitter page claimed that it was all a ‘rumour’.
But after a cursory look at jail records in the Miami Dade county area where Dammy Krane was said to have been detained, his name popped up on several websites for having been picked up for grand theft, credit card scams and armed robbery.
Shortly after, a private jet rental company tweeted via their official handle that the Nigerian star was arrested for paying a flight on their service using numbers from a stolen credit card.
The development marks a shocking turn for the much-loved artiste. The 23-year-old had been a fan favourite for his tunes such as ‘My Dear’, ‘Falele’, ‘Ligali’ and ‘Gbetiti’.
In 2012, he was signed to 2face Idibia‘s record label, Hypertek and was described as the next big thing to follow in the footsteps of the legendary musician – and for a while he was hot.
But in the shadows of equally popular youngsters like Davido and Wizkid at the time, Dammy Krane became a distant contender for the heart of teenyboppers in Nigeria.
His deal with Hypertek also became shrouded in mystery; while he and 2face maintained a civil facade in public, the artiste appeared to be frustrated by the label’s lack of push. eventually, he soon started to do his own ‘thing’.
That ‘thing’ saw him become a regular visitor to the United States and as many people noticed, he started to floss and flaunt the expensive lifestyle he was living.
Dammy Krane claimed at one point to have been signed to Davido’s DMW label but neither party has released an official statement to that effect.
Only a few days leading up to when he was arrested, he posted a series of photos of himself flying on a private jet. There are photos that copied DJ Khaled’s ‘bag-on-the-ground-and-unlooking-pose’.
There’s a photo of him eating jollof rice and licking his fingers. The last photo before his arrest was of him standing on the wings of a Gulfstream.
Apparently those flights were paid for with stolen credit cards.
‘Yahoo Yahoo’, as cheques and credit card scams are called, has long been a way of life for many young Nigerians and has been glamourized by many musicians.
As at press time, Dammy Krane is still detained at Turner Guildford Knight Correctional Center, a medium and maximum security prison that also serves as the central processing unit for arrests in the Miami-Dade area.
Canadian singer, Justin Bieber was once detained there after a DUI arrest in 2014.
SOURCE: thenet.ng