It resulted in 281 arrests in the United States and overseas. Specifically, 167 of the arrests were made in Nigeria, 18 in Turkey and 15 in Ghana. Furthermore, arrests were also made in France, Italy, Japan, Kenya, Malaysia, and the United Kingdom (UK). The operation also resulted in the seizure of nearly $3.7 million.
Among those indicted on federal charges in the Business Email Compromise (BEC) schemes is Kenneth Ninalowo. Equally important, Kenneth is alleged to be the elder brother of Nollywood actor, Bolanle Ninalowo. He was arrested alongside a lady, Brittney Stokes in Chicago, Illinois.
Both were charged with laundering over $1.5 million from proceeds of BEC scams.
According to the indictment, a community college and an energy company were defrauded into sending approximately $5 million to fraudulent bank accounts controlled by the duo. However, banks were able to freeze approximately $3.6 million of the $5 million defrauded in the two schemes. Also, law enforcement officials seized a 2019 Range Rover Velar S from Stokes and approximately $175,909 from Stokes and Ninalowo.
Also indicted by the FBI are Opeyemi Adeoso, Benjamin Ifebajo, Emmanuel Igomu and Jude Balogun. Other Nigerians indicted are Ifeanyi Eke, Joshua Ikejimba and Chinedu Ironuah.
Adeoso and Ifebajo, both based in Texas, were arrested and charged with bank fraud, wire fraud, money laundering and conspiracy. Both suspects were alleged to have received and laundered at least $3.4 million. In furtherance of their scheme, the FBI alleged that the suspects assumed 12 fictitious identities.
Further, they were accused of defrauding 37 victims from across the United States.
On the other hand, Igomu and Balogun were alleged to be involved in a BEC scam that originated in Nigeria. The FBI noted that the scam began with a $3.5 million transfer of funds fraudulently misdirected from a Georgia-based health care provider to accounts across the United States. The two Nigerians, Igomu and Balogun were arrested on charges of aiding and abetting wire fraud. Specifically, the charges were for their part in receiving and transmitting monies fraudulently derived from the BEC.
Likewise, Eke, Ikejimba and Ironuah, all based in the US, were charged for their involvement in a Nigeria-based BEC scam. The trio were slammed with a one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud. Also, they face a one count of wire fraud for their part in the BEC scheme.
As a matter of fact, the FBI disclosed that the scheme affected hundreds of victims in the United States. Further, losses were placed in excess of $10 million.
The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) also confirmed that it worked with the FBI on Operation reWired.
EFCC boss, Ibrahim Magu revealed that the operation resulted in the recovery of the sum of 169,850 dollars. Also recovered was the sum of N92 million.
from 1stnews.
Nigerian men are becoming a nuisance to the world. Nigerian mother’s and father how market for your untrained miscreants. You only focus on training the girls.
ReplyDeleteNo wahala o,may all your male lines become miscreants as you have so labelled them.
DeleteThese guys should stop disgracing us nau!!
ReplyDeleteIf I throw my naija passport now, the oyibo go look passport look me, for him mind he will say na dem! In fact I’m not going anywhere again until our image is ‘recleared’
Just Krix!
Farabale! Everyone keeps saying this but still Nigerians are breaking bounds everywhere. You talk bad about the criminals and uplift the good deeds. You earn respect, you don’t demand it. I got my green card recently and the interviewer was just smiling at me and didn’t ask much questions. Imagine someone interviewing you and smiling despite knowing I am Nigerian. If you let that weigh you down, it will and it will show.
DeleteImmigrations officers look at everyone with disgust so don’t feel sometype of way
This was what I said yesterday and they came after me like a pack of wolves.
ReplyDeleteIn the USA where I live, while discussing purely introduction/business with a
elderly gentleman, it came to where
"you were originally from", once I said "Nigeria", he took some impulsive steps back. He began telling me how "your people" are
distinguishing themselves in scams. He mentioned active cases in courts and
convictions secured etc. some of which I know.
That is how deep it is. It is sad.
Anon 13:11 you don’t use quotation marks for your own words, You only quote the other person. Also it’s not much of a big deal, but all punctuations go inside the quotation not outside the quotation. Please bear in mind that, I’m not perfect or trying to show myself, because I’m assuming you honestly dont know just like i didn’t for a while. My dad actually corrected me not long ago. I appreciate your use of quotations regardless.
DeleteMost of our politicians names will be there but as usually they will cover that part..Corrupt nation...
ReplyDeleteI still don’t understand why you will be scamming at all but most importantly, why will you be scamming inside USA. You have to spam which means you are using a device and email.
ReplyDeleteI have personally found the real life identity of trolls online myself without any sophisticated tools that FBI has but one random Chukwu or Segun feels he is untraceable by police.
You send email, you don’t think your Mac ID has registered along with IP. Even if you change IP, it is a mask. The same way they trace phone calls to a specific place, they can trace your IP too and even if they don’t know who you are exactly, they just look for Nigerians in a 50 radius mile and BMV reports will bring it. They start checking each one and match it to you. You can’t escape it especially with tax fraud and BEC. You just can’t escape it. The moment you have a DL in USA, your facial biodata is stamped! Even if you like use passport with another name to open an account, BMV records will still use video surveillance footage to get you.
If you want the least chance of getting caught, stay away from USA. That doesn’t mean you can’t be caught o, it just means you have a lower chance of getting caught.
Most of these spammers can make good money in cyber security but no! I mean you know how all this works and know what to use to stop it. Invest 800 hours of your time and use your skill to make good money.
I’m waiting for when their Dubai money laundering plugs will start getting arrested. That’s when a dent will really happen and people will start warming themselves. Hausas are the ones guilty of that part of fraud because I know most people like to believe Hausas are not involved. Shiooooor
I laugh in Swahili when morons keep chanting that igbos are the only ones doing fraud, what are these Yoruba names doing here? As for Hausa and Edo,that's story for another day. Nigerians have become so greedy that fraud is now seen as a normal day to day activity, it has so eaten deep to the extent that religious leaders are not left out, my hubby and i have sworn never to do business with any religious group or persons except we get full payment of our money. In a bid to show off,these thieves are really tarnishing and destroying the image of these country and the most painful part is seeing those in some of these countries doing legal jobs yet still attach fraud as a side hustle.
DeleteWhich Mac ID is registered where? You do know that your MAC doesn't leave your LAN? Once traffic coming from device hits the router, the MAC is dropped. Thank me later. They d9nt catch them with Mac ID. Even your IO address isn't specific to a building. It can only give them an idea of the area you are or if several mailsbor posts are made from the same person.
DeleteYou are right about MAC ID but are you saying it can’t be gotten if they want to find you? It was dropped doesn’t mean your router haven’t noticed it. It won’t go further but it has been noticed. Why do you think some sites won’t allow register twice from the same pc? Or some sites will let you get a free trial once and even if you delete cookies and clear history and all, you still can’t register again.
DeleteAs for IP address, I mentioned even if they don’t know you personally, they can profile you to check people around that vicinity. IP is not specific to a building we all know that but you know very well, if they check Nigerians by record and address around the area, they get closer.
You know nothing is anonymous online. If you are good in tech, you’d know this. Even btc is not entirely anonymous. Invictus was extremely stupid to think non of his scams would have been reported but even if he doesn’t go to USA, the fact that they got a warrant to search his inbox is the finish off! You can never ever be too careful. Best thing is just be legit. I see you know about tech, are you saying you can’t catch a troll on Instagram with just his profile? Many of this spammers/scammers are school dropouts who don’t understand how internet works. All they know is cpanel, scampage, link, mailer and they start shooting with internet that was registered in their name, pc that they use to access their real Facebook, real bank account. You will get sloppy in crime, you can’t help it. It’s human nature to get sloppy
It's not only Hausas that are in the North o.
DeleteIt doesn’t take a tech genius to break Invictus case. His recovery email gave him out. Even my grandmother would trace him if given access to his gmail account.
DeleteAbout MAC, Gmail, yahoomail ans the rest will never have access to your MAC address.
A website that can read your MAC address, must have have special scripts on their servers and force your browser to download them. If not, your MAC ain’t going anywhere. Again, good luck tracing the owner of the MAC address. You think vendors keep a register of MAC address, the corresponding device and the name of the purchaser? Lmao.
Not again
ReplyDelete