30 YEAR OLD NIGERIAN JAILED IN US OVER $25M INTERNET SCAM

January 22, 2020

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Adindu tricked victims into wiring more than $25m into bank accounts he opened in China.

The prosecutors said the funds would be difficult for victims in the United States to recover. The convict was said to have defrauded his victims by impersonating executives or vendors of companies and directing employees of those companies to make large wire transfers.

The prosecutors said,such scams are known as “business email compromise”,adding that the FBI had found that business email compromise scammers often used Chinese bank accounts.

It would be recalled that, Adindu was arrested at a Houston airport in 2016. He was said to be‎ residing in both Guangzhou, China, and Lagos,Nigeria during the period of the crime‎.

The court was further told that he worked with others to carry out business email compromise scams from 2014 to 2016.

Prosecutors said the scammers’ targets included an unnamed New York investment firm, where an employee received an email claiming in June 2015 to be from an investment adviser at another firm asking for a $25,200 wire transfer.

The prosecutors said employee later learned the email was not actually sent by that adviser and as a result did not comply with a second wire transfer request for $75,100, according to the indictment.

However,Gary Conroy, the counsel for the convict said the Nigerian’s role consisted mostly of setting up bank accounts in China and Hong Kong.

The lawyer further argued that the sentence was substantially less than the 97 to 121 months called for by federal guidelines

‘I think the judge accurately assessed his relatively minor role in this conspiracy,” Conroy said.