Nigerian man, Animashaun Adebo, has pleaded guilty to wire fraud conspiracy over his involvement in a series of business email compromise and romance scams that resulted in more than $50m in losses.
Punch reports a statement obtained on the US DoJ website on Tuesday that Adebo, also known as “Kazeem” and “Kazeem Animashaun,” entered a guilty plea on Monday at a federal court in Brooklyn.
The statement noted that Adebo and his co-conspirators orchestrated multiple fraudulent schemes targeting individuals and small businesses across the United States, particularly within the Eastern District of New York.
The statement reads: “Earlier today in federal court in Brooklyn, Animashaun Adebo, also known as ‘Kazeem’ and ‘Kazeem Animashaun,’ pleaded guilty to wire fraud conspiracy for his role in a series of fraudulent business email compromise and related romance schemes that resulted in more than $50 million in losses by individuals and small businesses located within the Eastern District of New York and throughout the United States.
“The defendant and his co-conspirators misappropriated victim funds and laundered them through shell company accounts in the United States and abroad, sometimes using unsuspecting middlemen to further obscure the fraudulent source of the funds.
“As one part of the BEC schemes, victim-individuals involved in real estate transactions received fraudulent emails purporting to be from legitimate parties to those transactions. The emails instructed them to wire funds they believed to be related to the real estate transactions to specified bank accounts.
“The fraudulent email accounts that contacted the victims closely resembled but were slightly different from the email addresses of the legitimate parties to the transaction (a process known as ‘spoofing’).”