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9 Nigerians reportedly arrested over $3.5m fraud in US

Nine Nigerians have reportedly been arrested in the United States for defrauding people and businesses of over $3.5 million.

The United States attorney for the southern district of New York, Geoffrey S. Berman and the special agent in charge of the Tampa, Florida, field office of U.S. immigration and customs enforcement’s Homeland security investigations (“HSI”), James C. Spero said this in a statement on Thursday, April 25, 2019.

According to reports, the suspects are: Oluwaseun Adelekan, Olalekan Daramola, Solomon Aburekhanlen, Gbenga Oyeneyin, Abiola Olajumoke, Temitope Omotayo, Bryan Eadie, Albert Lucas and Ademola Adebogun.

The suspects were said to have committed the fraud through business email compromises, a Russian oil scam, and a romance scam.

Berman said, “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.”

In a statement by the US officials, the suspects were also accused of participating in a scheme to defraud businesses and individuals through several categories of 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”).” the statement reads in part.

According to the Cable, the nine suspects have been charged with one count of conspiring to commit wire fraud and each of them faces a maximum potential sentence of 20 years in prison.

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