The United States has charged three Nigerians with money laundering and a fraud scheme with more than $6 million in losses.
The Nigerians – 29-year-old Kosi Goodness Simon-Ebo, James Junior Aliyu aged 28 and Henry Onyedikachi Echefu, aged 31 – are accused of conspiring to commit wire fraud and money laundering related to a business email compromise (BEC) scheme with losses of more than $6 million.
One of them was extradited from Canada to the U.S. yesterday to face a federal indictment in a U.S. District Court in Greenbelt, MD.
In a statement on Thursday, the US Department of Justice said the seven-count indictment involves the defendants conspiring with others to perpetrate a BEC scheme.
Specifically, the indictment alleges that the defendants and their co-conspirators, including co-conspirators residing in the state of Maryland, gained unauthorised access to email accounts associated with individuals and businesses targeted by the conspirators.
It was gathered that 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.
If convicted, the defendants each face a maximum sentence of 20 years in federal prison for the wire fraud conspiracy, for the money laundering conspiracy, and for each count of wire fraud, the US justice department said.
“But we find that humans traversing these territories for economic trees and fruits such as bush mangoes, Afang leaves, cocoa, have left these places porous, which is the reason the animals stray out.
“To minimise incessant infiltration into the National Parks, we are providing alternative economic means, trainings and empowerments for forest communities,
“We also support them in the area of beekeeping and livestock, as ways to dissuade them,” he said.
Imong added that the interface with stakeholders was to reduce illegal logging in the state, because conservation required communities to have a change of behaviour towards nature.