US arrest nine Nigerians over $3.5m wire fraud

The United States security agents have arrested nine Nigerians for defrauding $3.5m from people.

Disclosing this in a statement obtained by newsmen, Mr. Geoffrey S. Berman, the 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”), said they allegedly committed the fraud through business email compromises, a Russian oil scam, and a romance scam.

The statement reads thus, “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. “The schemes allegedly earned the defendants $3.5 million – and also arrests on federal felony charges.” “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”).”

Source: Vanguard