Nine Nigerians have been arrested
in the United States for defrauding individuals and businesses of more than
$3.5 million.
Geoffrey S. Berman, the United
States attorney for the southern district of New York, and James C. Spero,
special agent in charge of the Tampa, Florida, field office of U.S. immigration
and customs enforcement’s Homeland security investigations (“HSI”), disclosed
this in a statement on Thursday.
The suspects are Oluwaseun
Adelekan, Olalekan Daramola, Solomon Aburekhanlen, Gbenga Oyeneyin, Abiola
Olajumoke, Temitope Omotayo, Bryan Eadie, Albert Lucas and Ademola Adebogun.
The US officials said the
suspects committed the fraud through business email compromises, a Russian oil
scam, and a romance scam.
“As alleged, these defendants
deployed three different email schemes to defraud their victims. The common denominator in all three schemes
was the defendants’ alleged fleecing of their victims through fictitious online
identities,” said Berman.
“The schemes allegedly earned the
defendants $3.5 million – and also arrests on federal felony charges.”
The defendants are accused of
participating in a scheme to defraud businesses and individuals through several
categories of false and misleading representations.
“Sending victims email messages
that appeared to be, but were not, from legitimate business counterparties that
included instructions to the victims to wire payment to those seemingly
legitimate business counterparties into bank accounts that were actually under
the control of, and/or maintained by, Adelekan, Daramola, Aburekhanlen,
Oyeneyin, Olajumoke, Omotayo, Eadie, Lucas, and Adebogun (the “Business Email
Compromise Scam”),” read the statement.
“Sending email messages and text
messages to at least one victim offering an opportunity to invest in oil stored
in Russian oil tank farms conditioned on that victim wiring upfront payments
into bank accounts purportedly affiliated with the purported oil investment but
actually opened by and under the control of Aburekhanlen, Olajumoke, and
Oyeneyin (the “Russian Oil Scam”).
“Sending email messages and text
messages to at least one victim from an individual (or individuals) purporting
to be a female with romantic intentions toward the victim requesting, further
to establishing a romantic relationship, the wiring of payment into a bank
account under the control of Omotayo (the “Romance Scam”).”
They are each charged in the
indictment with one count of conspiring to commit wire fraud and each defendant
faces a maximum potential sentence of 20 years in prison.
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