Category: Bank fraud

Another Nigerian Sentenced for Cyber Scam, also Committed Marriage Fraud to Stay in US

~ Ann Corcoran ~ 1 Comment

I promise this isn’t a blog just for Nigerian scammers we ‘welcomed’ to America even if it seems that way sometimes!

Maybe we have a special visa I didn’t know about to attract the best and brightest scammers in the world to ply their trade while living among us!

First thing I did after seeing the news from the US Justice Department about Nigerian national Olufolajimi Abegunde getting a six year sentence in the slammer (the taxpayers must now pay for!) was to see if there was a picture this time.

Well, what do you know there is!

Abegunde received an MBA from Texas A&M which gives us a clue that he came to the US on a student visa.

You will see below that he committed marriage fraud to stay—a common pathway for ‘new American’ wannabees.

The photo at right has been used widely around the world (not much US media coverage of his case), but Nigerian writers are promoting the propaganda that Abegunde was being racially profiled by the feds in Tennessee.

In January of this year, according to an African blogger, Abegunde is innocent and he was scapegoated by racist feds operating in racist Memphis, Tennessee:

Other updates to the saga also shows that a local judge in Memphis TN area, the city where he is being held, confirmed that Federal authorities around TN area act and prosecute based on racial bias.

Judge Fowlkes of Memphis TN confirmed this while trying a gun charge case.The case involved a white man who records say sold an undercover officer 100 ecstasy pills for $800, while his black partner stayed in the car with a gun.

Fowlkes asked why the white defendant wasn’t slapped with the same gun charge as the black defendant since they worked together. The gun charge carres an automatic 5 year sentence just for the black person.

The above case shows that Olufolajimi’s claims of racial mistreatment is valid and should be taken into account. His family wishes to draw the attention of current Presidential aspirants and other concerned Nigerians to look into this matter as Nigeria cannot continue to fold it’s arms while it’s citizens are mistreated on the basis of skin color.

Now have a look at the US Justice Department case against the pure-as-the-driven-snow Abegunde:

Nigerian Citizen Sentenced for Role in International Cyber-Fraud Scheme

Memphis, TN – A citizen of Nigeria residing in Atlanta, Georgia, was sentenced to 78 months in prison yesterday for his role in an international cyber fraud scheme….

[….]

Abegunde and Ramos-Alonso participated in a criminal organization in which members “spoofed” emails and created fake profiles on dating websites in order to fool victims into sending money to bogus bank accounts under the control of members of the conspiracy. The proceeds would be laundered and subsequently wired out of the United States to destinations including West Africa.

The organization as a whole is believed to have caused more than $10,000,000 in damage to United States citizens and businesses.

U.S. Attorney D. Michael Dunavant said: “Frauds perpetrated through the Internet cause significant financial harm to businesses and individuals in our District and throughout the United States. Because those committing Internet fraud involve foreign nationals and others who hide behind technology, the cases are difficult – but not impossible – to investigate. We will continue to deploy our resources to take on these difficult cases, and we are pleased to achieve justice for the victims in this case.”

Read the details about how the crooks set up their cyber crimes, but below we see how Abegunde used marriage fraud to stay in the US once he finished ‘studying’ at Texas A & M.  You can’t make this up!

The Justice Department continues…

In addition to his financial activities, Abegunde also engaged in a conspiracy to commit marriage fraud. Abegunde was married during his studies at Texas A&M, but divorced his wife in 2016 to marry a U.S. service member through whom he could obtain immigration and health care benefits and also open new bank accounts.

He continued to live with his first wife in Atlanta while his U.S. service member wife was deployed to South Korea.

While incarcerated and awaiting trial in the Western District of Tennessee, Abegunde continued his conspiratorial activities, trying to convince his fake spouse, who has since filed for divorce, to refuse to testify against him.

Abegunde is contesting the divorce from his fake spouse.

Abegunde also engaged in witness tampering by sending a self-written Motion to Dismiss bearing his former attorney’s name and professional attestation. The evidence at trial established that Abegunde drafted and sent the motion, which his attorney expressly did not authorize, to his faux spouse in an effort to deceive her into not testifying against him.

Read it all here.

You wouldn’t know it if you just watch cable news and read your local paper, but there are many, many fraud schemes (perpetrated by foreign nationals)  busted every day by the Trump Administration.  The President should be bragging about the crooks and criminals he is getting off the streets.

At each rally he should showcase some of the best cases his Justice Department has prosecuted.

Be sure to see my tag below for Nigeria!

Feds Bust 18 International Gang Members Stealing Millions Via ATM Skimmers

~ Ann Corcoran ~ 2 Comments

The Department of Justice announced charges have been filed against 18 crooks who have defrauded Americans out of millions of dollars by building and using skimming devices to steal money from bank accounts in at least 18 states.

The cool thing about the Justice Department press release is that we don’t need a secret decoder ring to figure out where this latest bunch of foreign crooks are from—they have provided a handy chart to inform us!  Most are Romanians!

Here are a few snips from that press release:

18 Members Of International Fraud And Money Laundering Conspiracy Charged In Manhattan Federal Court

Geoffrey S. Berman, the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, William F. Sweeney Jr., the Assistant Director-in-Charge of the New York Office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (“FBI”), Troy Miller, Director, Field Operations, New York, U.S. Customs and Border Protection (“CBP”), and James P. O’Neill, the Police Commissioner for the City of New York (“NYPD”), today announced the unsealing of an indictment and two superseding indictments charging 18 defendants with participating in an international conspiracy to commit a variety of offenses, including access device fraud, wire fraud, bank fraud, and aggravated identity theft.

[….]

FBI Assistant Director William F. Sweeney Jr. said: “An extremely frustrating thing to experience, you grab cash from an ATM but then find out your bank information was stolen and your account drained.

The scheme detailed here cost victims money, time, and effort to get their finances returned and their identities restored, which can be an infuriating long process. The FBI New York Cyber Crimes Task Force and our law enforcement partners have worked exhaustively to find the members of this criminal organization, and the arrests and charges are a testament to their hard work stopping these thieves from creating more havoc for anyone trying to access their hard-earned money.”

[….]

[The crooks] participated in a transnational organization that engaged in what is colloquially referred to as “ATM skimming” (the “Skimming Organization”). The Skimming Organization unlawfully obtained victim account holders’ debit card account information by using advanced technological devices to surreptitiously record the debit card numbers and personal identification numbers at automatic teller machines (“ATMs”), and then manufacturing counterfeit and fraudulent debit cards that bore the victim account holders’ account information. The Skimming Organization’s members then used those cards to fraudulently withdraw cash from victims’ bank accounts.

[….]

The defendants carried out hundreds of ATM skimming operations across the U.S., including in New York and at least 17 other states. The scheme defrauded financial institutions and individual victims of more than $20 million.

Below is a screenshot of the first part of the DOJs chart. Is this what Open Borders Inc. might be referring to when they tout ‘new American’ entrepreneurs?

Go to the press release, here, for the whole list!

FBI in Nigeria: Another Arrest Made in Major Fraud Scheme

~ Ann Corcoran ~ 2 Comments

Remember the story a few weeks ago about the FBI arresting over a dozen Nigerians (aka ‘new Americans’) operating out of the US to steal from unsuspecting Americans and others.

Here is a brief story from Nigerian media about a new bust in the case.  It interested me to see that our FBI is working in Africa to find the frauds and crooks who rip-off mostly vulnerable American women.

FBI List: We’ve Arrested Emmanuel Adedeji Oluwatosin, Uncovered N1 Billion In His Account – EFCC

The Economic and Financial Crime Commission (EFCC) in collaboration with the United States’ Federal Bureau of Investigation has Emmanuel Adedeji Oluwatosin, one of the 77 Nigerians indicted by the US government over a large-scale scam.

FBI-EFCC-

Two cars – Mercedes Benz E550 and Mercedes Benz C450 -, an iPhone, laptops, a modem and SIM cards were seized from his residence.

He was paraded in Sokoto State on Thursday, following his arrest in Kaduna State.

According to the Zonal Head, Abdullahi Lawal, Oluwatosin and his accomplices acquired retirement account information (RAI) and personally identifiable information (PII) of multiple persons which they used to wire funds into newly-created business bank accounts.

The proceeds were then converted to cryptocurrency.

Preliminary investigations, EFCC noted, showed that about N1,437,889,157.15 passed through the suspect’s accounts. [If I did the conversion correctly that should be about $4 million in USD.—ed]

Seventy million naira from that money had been traced, said Lawal as he said efforts were on to recover the money.

Do the math, I think you will see the vast majority of the money will never be recovered.

How Two Massive Fraud Cases Intersected

~ Ann Corcoran

Because the cases are instructive and because, yes, I do write from time to time about American frauds and crooks not just the ‘New American’ variety, here is an extensive piece at the LA Times about how perhaps the largest Medicare fraud case in US history intersected with the College Admissions scam involving the rich and well-connected.

Philip Esformes
Philip Esformes before the fall.  As a flight risk he has been behind bars since July 2016 awaiting sentencing in September.

Now if only a paper with the stature of the LA Times would put an investigative journalist to work on the Kenyan Killer case where as one reader pointed out it would be difficult for the alleged prolific killer Billy Chemirmir to pawn that much jewelry without help, a network of criminals (dependent on old ladies being murdered) might be exposed.
I’ve reported previously on the case of Philip Esformes who ran a nursing home empire built on defrauding you and me, American taxpayers, but haven’t written about the Singer scam designed for elites to get their little darlings into top tier colleges.

FBI found clues to college admissions scandal years earlier in massive Medicare fraud case

 

Federal authorities were combing through the finances and phone records of a Miami businessman suspected of Medicare fraud when they came across a curious name: Rick Singer.

Rick Singer
Rick Singer https://www.foxnews.com/us/who-is-william-rick-singer-college-admissions-cheating-scandals-alleged-ringleader

Philip Esformes, who was accused of farming out patients from his nursing homes to steal millions in bogus insurance claims, had sent hundreds of thousands of dollars to a foundation Singer controlled. And in text messages discovered on Esformes’ phone, the men discussed how one of Esformes’ sons had performed on his college entrance exams.
Only years later would authorities learn what Esformes had paid Singer to do: Slip his daughter into USC as a fake soccer player and fix his youngest son’s college entrance exam, according to statements a prosecutor made in court and sources familiar with the case.
Singer has said he struck similar deals with dozens more parents, an admission that has roiled higher education and implicated elites from Hollywood, Silicon Valley and the Newport coast.
But in 2016, when agents seized the iPhone Esformes used to text Singer and obtained their messages, Singer was a peripheral, if curious, player in an enormous healthcare fraud investigation. The Esformes case marks the first time Singer is known to have crossed the radar of law enforcement.

[….]

It is unclear how much federal authorities uncovered of Esformes’ dealings with Singer while investigating his case. But at his trial in March, a fraud expert used by the government to make sense of his finances testified that Esformes had made $400,000 in payments over several years to Singer’s foundation. At least some of the money was traced to Medicaid and Medicare funds, the expert testified.

Too funny! Esformes paid Singer $400,000 and his daughter did get into USC as a fake soccer player, but get this…

The daughter, who could not be reached for comment, was enrolled at USC for a year before transferring to a fashion school in New York City, according to a source with knowledge of the case and her LinkedIn profile.

There is much more, continue reading here.
 

Doctor Sentenced to Prison in Bank Fraud Case, Could be Deported When Released

~ Ann Corcoran ~ 3 Comments

I hate these stories about bank fraud because they have so many twists and turns that they make my head spin.

Dr. Aslam
Dr. Zahid Aslam is going to jail!

And, this one might not have been worth even writing about except that a headline caught my eye—a rare headline that uses the word “deportation” because he was in the country illegally as he proceeded to defraud us.
I was also interested because the crook was practicing medicine in Maryland (New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Delaware as well).
Here is the headline at the Business Journal,

Former doctor faces possible deportation after being sentenced to prison in fraud case

I couldn’t access that story because apparently I’ve read too many stories there recently, but don’t worry because the case of gynecologist Dr. Zahid Aslam is covered extensively in other publications going back a couple of years.
Continue reading “Doctor Sentenced to Prison in Bank Fraud Case, Could be Deported When Released” →