Key Highlights
- Three Nigerians have been indicted by the United state department of Justice over alleged $6 million fraud.
- According to the indictment, The three men are charged with wire fraud and have been extradited to the United States to answer for their alleged crime.
- They were accused of conspiring to gain unauthorized access to email accounts associated with individuals and businesses.
A United States grand jury has indicted three Nigerians on seven counts for conspiring to perpetrate a business email compromise scheme worth $6 million.
In a statement by the U.S. Department of Justice Thursday, they were accused of conspiring to gain unauthorized access to email accounts associated with individuals and businesses.
The three Nigerian suspects are Henry Onyedikachi Echefu, Kosi Goodness Simon-Ebo, and James Junior Aliyu.
They were charged with “Conspiracy to commit wire fraud and money laundering and firewire fraud and money laundering charges related to a business email compromise ‘BEC’ scheme with losses of more than $6 million.”
The statement
The U.S. Department of Justice revealed that Simon-Ebo is charged with three wire fraud counts which involve $6,343,533.10.
He was extradited to the U.S. from Canada on Wednesday and is expected to make his first appearance in court today.
Simon-Ebo alongside the other suspects is also accused of conspiring to commit money laundering by disbursing the fraudulently obtained funds in the drop accounts to other accounts.
Parts of the statement read “According to the seven-count indictment, from February 2016 until at least July 2017, the defendants conspired with others to perpetrate a BEC scheme.
“Specifically, the indictment alleges that the defendants and their co-conspirators, including co-conspirators residing in Maryland, gained unauthorized access to email accounts associated with individuals and businesses targeted by the conspirators.
“The co-conspirators then allegedly sent false wiring instructions to the victims’ email accounts from “spoofed” emails, which are emails with forged sender addresses, to deceive the victims into sending money to bank accounts controlled by perpetrators of the scheme, called “drop accounts.”
“The indictment also alleges that the defendants conspired to commit money laundering by disbursing the fraudulently obtained funds in the drop accounts to other accounts by initiating account transfers, withdrawing cash, obtaining cashier’s checks, and by writing checks to other individuals and entities, to hide the true ownership and the source of those assets.”
“For example, defendant Aliyu is alleged to have made a $350,000 wire transfer from one of the drop accounts in Maryland to an account he controlled in South Africa, knowing that the funds were the proceeds of a crime and that the transaction was designed to conceal the nature, source, and ownership of those funds.
“Specifically, Simon-Ebo is charged in three wire fraud counts involving $6,343,533.10 in victim funds being wired to accounts controlled by conspirators.” The statement reads.
