Irony has always been an integral part of my existence. It has been there even at the beginning, before I was born, taunting me.

For instance, it was ironic that my parents decided to marry, they had never liked each other. It was ironic that I was birthed, my mother said it was an unintended happenstance (her nice way of telling me I was a mistake). It was ironic I turned out to be a boy, my parents had preferred a girl. It is ironic that I look more like my mother; according to her, my father did all the work. It is ironic that I turned out to be a criminal, I had always been a good boy. It’s ironic that I am dying now. All my life I have been careful.

My name is Charles and I am a criminal. At least that’s what the papers say. I do not dispute their truth and I also did not write this for you to pity me. I’m writing this for you to know my story, to separate fact from fiction.

I am not the monster the headlines paint me to be, I am a human like you. A human being seeking attention.

I have always sought for attention for as long as I can remember. Being an only child did not, in any way, change that. Both my parents were lax in their parental duties, I might as well have been an orphan.

My father was a business man, he was too busy being a sugar daddy to the street whores, he could never have been a real father to me. My mother was into business also, Dubai was her second home. She took so much pride in building her empire in Dubai, she neglected building her own home.

Dysfunctional is a mere adjective, it doesn’t begin to describe my family. I believe the English language doesn’t have a word that quite aptly describes it. I also don’t have a word for it, all I have is a feeling.

At 16, I committed my first crime, on the internet. 16 is the age when the only crimes boys are thought to perpetrate, on the internet, are underage pornography and gambling. At 16, I was into something much deeper. It was at that age that I robbed my first bank.

It was pretty easy, all I had to do was hack into their computers, dismantle their firewalls and the rest was history. I stole 4 million naira, money I didn’t need. I did it just so I could see my mother after four long months, I was afraid she wouldn’t make Christmas. I knew that when the bank notified her (and all its other customers) of the theft, she would be forced to return to the country. In the end, I was Mr. Cellophane. She never even noticed me. I gave the money to charity to cleanse my conscience.

Was I comfortable? Was there excess money? Did I lack anything materially? Yes, yes and no. But money isn’t everything, people forget that it is just meant to be a tool for achieving other things, not the achievement itself.

I went to the best of schools, had the classiest of friends, had the most expensive clothes and I was wealthy. But I was lonely and I lacked parental guidance. It drove me to oblivion. Once I went dark, I couldn’t come back, nothing made me want to come back. I never had true friends.

Cyber-crime is one of the hardest crimes there is, but I learned the ropes. Hacking takes an ingenious mind, one that I have. If I wasn’t a cyber-criminal, I’d probably have been a computer engineer at a software company or something. Or I’d probably have discovered the next Facebook. But because of my parents…………

I can’t blame them for everything, I blame over-exposure also. At 14, I found the Dark Web, so while my mates were downloading the Twitter, Facebook applications, I was downloading Orbot and Tor.

Hacking into the central bank online platform was easy, they don’t have a strong engineering team. Their firewalls were easy to skirt. Once inside, I had taken enough money to buy a small country. Again, money I didn’t need. But I took it anyway, to make a point. My family will never know the kind of person I have become, they won’t even have the decency to care. I too have misplaced the ability to care.

The newspapers say I am close to being apprehended. That’s a lie, the police will never find me. I’m dust in the wind. I just wanted to tell my story, I don’t need your sympathy.

But if you’re reading this, it’s too late. I am dead.