The Federal High Court sitting in Lagos has sentenced Nollywood filmmaker and producer, Olajide Kareem, popularly known as Seun Egbegbe, to seven years imprisonment with hard labour for fraud.

Egbegbe will, however, be allowed to go home free as he has been in detention for 57 months since his arrest in 2017.

Justice Oluremi Oguntoyinbo held that he has stayed in detention longer than the jail term he is to serve and had thus exhausted the jail term in detention, hence the court’s decision to order his release.

The judge also freed the four other defendants who were standing trial with him.

Egbegbe was imprisoned on February 10, 2017, following his arrest for allegedly obtaining money by false pretence from no fewer than 40 bureau de change operators in different parts of Lagos from 2015 to 2017.

Egbegbe, who is said to be the owner of Ebony Production, allegedly defrauded the BDC operators by claiming to have naira to exchange for foreign currency and vice versa.

He and one Oyekan Ayomide were first arraigned by the police on February 10, 2017, before Justice Oluremi Oguntoyinbo, on 36 counts bordering on advance fee fraud.

They pleaded not guilty and were remanded in prison from that date.