UPDATED
DAVAO CITY (MindaNews / 1 Sep) — An unidentified individual who appears to have control of the Davao City Police Office (DCPO)-Sta. Ana Police Station’s Facebook page is asking for a “refund” after losing interest in the page he/she allegedly bought from a hacker.
The unknown individual who claims to be Nigerian said in a statement posted on the Facebook page Friday, August 29, 2025 that he no longer wants the page.
The unknown individual wants some P10,500 or 280,000 Nigerian naira in exchange for access to the police Facebook page.
It is unclear whether the individual asking for the ransom really did buy access to the Facebook page from somebody else.
It also appears that the hacker simply exists alongside the police station’s current admins and have not kicked them out, as of Monday night.
The supposed Nigerian who bought the page said he changed his mind after seeing that his profile was not on the page.
Last week, the page was randomly introducing itself as a Nigerian citizen.
MindaNews visited the Sta. Ana Police Station Monday, Sept. 1, after noticing that something was off about its official Facebook Page.
As it turns out, Captain Kim Vianney C. Pomperada, deputy station commander, said the page has been hacked since July this year.
Pomperada said they suspect their page was hacked using an account of a former personnel of the station that had access to the police page.
He said it took a while before they learned of the security breach.
Pomperada said they failed to remove the account of the police personnel when he left because of “numerous tasks”.
There are multiple ways hackers gain access to Facebook pages.
These include compromising admin accounts, or compromising the Facebook Page directly by logging in using shared credentials.
Admin profiles are compromised using many methods, including clicking malicious links or phishing tactics.
Last year, MindaNews wrote about some of these methods where malicious actors gain access to Facebook Pages.
The hacked page now no longer contain some of their official posts, Pomperada said, and said the page sometimes even posts “funny” videos.
He said these non-police related posts may be causing confusion among the public.
He said that they have already forwarded the case to the police cybercrime unit and has requested Facebook owner Meta to block the unauthorized user. They hope to recover their station’s FB page by the end of the month.
Pomperada said they have now designated a permanent police personnel to handle a newly created alternate Facebook page of the police station.
As of writing, the Facebook page has changed its bio to “Calling Nigerian Police Force, Kayode Egbetokun, Inspector General of Police to investigate the Person behind hacking this page which was submitted to Interpol via email. We provided information and video of the person.”
In theory, if a page’s admin has full control over their own page, they can easily remove any rogue administrators—unless the rogue admin holds higher access privileges. (Razl EJ Teman / MindaNews)
