Photo credit: arstechnica.com
Nigerian National Receives Ten-Year Sentence for Major Phishing Scandal
A man from Nigeria residing in the United Kingdom has been sentenced to a decade in prison due to his involvement in a complex phishing operation that defrauded over 400 individuals seeking to purchase homes in the United States, accumulating losses exceeding $20 million. Many victims, including some who were saving for their future, lost everything they had.
According to a recent announcement from the US Department of Justice, 33-year-old Babatunde Francis Ayeni pleaded guilty to conspiracy to engage in wire fraud linked to an advanced email compromise scheme centered on real estate transactions within the US.
To pilfer large down payments, Ayeni and his associates dispatched phishing emails to title companies, real estate agents, and attorneys across the United States. In these scams, unsuspecting staff members who clicked on malicious links or attachments were met with prompts requesting their login credentials, which were then captured by the fraudsters.
With access gained, the hackers monitored email communications for sites where buyers were on the verge of transferring funds for home purchases. They would intervene at these critical moments to provide altered wiring instructions, redirecting payments to accounts they controlled. In an effort to erase traces of their crimes, the conspirators converted the stolen funds to Bitcoin via Coinbase.
The fraudulent activities came to light following an incident involving a real estate title company based in Gulf Shores, Alabama. Alarmingly, more than half of the victims were left unable to reverse the wire transfers. Reports indicate that some victims, who provided accounts of their losses in court, faced devastating financial repercussions, including one individual who lost over $114,000 while attempting to purchase a home for his elderly father, diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease.
Source
arstechnica.com