Two Nigerians who operated a London-based
cyber crime group have been jailed after reportedly stealing more than £1m.
Emmanuel Mmaduike and Olawale Kashimawo, both 31, obtained
thousands of business email addresses and passwords which they used to divert
payments from companies to themselves, according to the UK National Crime
Agency.
They were said to have operated from south-east London and
spent the money on “a lavish lifestyle”.
Sky News reports that they hired a helicopter, drove “flash
cars”, and “posed for photographs of themselves with wads of money, expensive
watches and drinking champagne”.
Known as business email compromise (BEC), the operation
involves the criminal impersonation of a senior executive and attempting to
convince the victim to transfer funds.
Mmaduike was said to have played the role of accessing the
victim’s email accounts and change invoices so that payments were directed to
mule bank accounts run by Kashimawo.
His collaborator then laundered the cash by arranging
withdrawals and international bank transfers which were carried out by other
fraudsters.
The pair are believed to have carried out more than £1m of
fraud and money laundering between April 2015 and November 2015, according to
the NCA.
Mmaduike was jailed in March 2017 for six years and 10
months after he admitted money laundering and fraud.
He also admitted perverting the course of justice in
relation to a sham marriage to a Dutch national.
Kashimawo was also jailed for six years and nine months
after admitting two counts of conspiracy to commit money laundering.
Similar arrests have been made in
Nigeria, one of the most recent being the six suspects arrested by the Economic and Financial Crimes
Commission (EFCC) in Abuja.
Courtesy: TheCable.ng
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