https://www.newdawnngr.com/2025/01/10/37-yr-old-nigerian-jailed-in-us-for-money-laundering/

A 37-year-old Nigerian man, Chukwunonso Obiora, has been sentenced to 11 years in prison for his involvement in separate schemes to launder criminal proceeds from fraud and obtaining a U.S. passport through false statements.

The sentencing, delivered by United States District Judge Indira Talwani, also includes three years of supervised release and restitution and forfeiture totaling $3.326,014.14 million dollars.

The announcement via a statement was made on January 5, 2025, by U.S. Attorney Joshua S. Levy and Michael J. Krol, Special Agent in Charge of Homeland Security Investigations New England, through the U.S. Department of Justice.

Obiora pleaded guilty in June 2024 to one count of passport fraud conspiracy and one count of money laundering conspiracy.

He was arrested in October 2023 in Atlanta, Georgia, on a criminal complaint and was held pending trial. In January 2024, he was indicted for his crimes.

The statement reads, “Between at least as early as March 2021 and May 2023, Obiora and several co-conspirators agreed to receive and withdraw the proceeds of business email compromises (BECs) from bank accounts that they controlled, and to direct those funds to other co-conspirators, in exchange for a cut of the criminal proceeds.

“BECs are a type of fraud scheme that targets companies that make regular business payments by wire. Cybercriminals use email to impersonate trusted parties to the payments in order to trick the victim companies into sending money to bank accounts controlled by participants in the scheme.

“The defendant’s money laundering conspiracy, of which he admitted to being a leader and organizer, involved obtaining individual victims’ means of identification and to create fake driver’s licenses, incorporate businesses and open bank accounts in the victims’ names; providing the bank accounts to co-conspirators involved in the BEC schemes as accounts to which victims could be tricked into sending wires; withdrawing money quickly from the bank accounts once the wire transfers arrived, before victim companies learned that they had been tricked into sending money; and depositing the proceeds into other accounts, and wiring BEC scheme proceeds to the defendant and others in Nigeria, China and elsewhere.

“The defendant and his co-conspirators took steps to conceal the existence of the conspiracy, including by forging business invoices and writing false memos on checks to suggest that the BEC scheme proceeds deposited into Destination Accounts were legitimate business revenues; and by making false statements to banks regarding the nature of the BEC scheme proceeds that were deposited into Destination Accounts.

“The defendant and his U.S.-based co-conspirators shared at least as much as 40 percent of the deposited BEC scheme proceeds as payment for their roles in the conspiracy.

“In just two-plus years, the defendant and his co-conspirators engaged in at least $6.5 million in financial transactions involving the proceeds of BEC schemes.

“After immigration authorities removed the defendant from the United States in December 2021, he agreed with a close relative who is an American citizen to obtain a U.S. passport in the relative’s name, which the defendant could use to re-enter the United States illegally.

“The relative reported his passport lost or stolen and, in May 2023, applied for a new passport at a U.S. Post Office in Watertown, Mass.

“The sworn application had the relative’s name on it, but a picture of the defendant. The relative sent the issued passport to the defendant, who, in October 2023, used the passport to travel from Nigeria to Detroit, Mich., where the defendant presented himself as his relative at the U.S. border.”

The investigation received critical support from the U.S. Department of State’s Diplomatic Security Service and its Criminal Investigations Division.

The case was prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorney Seth B. Kosto, Chief of the Securities, Financial & Cyber Fraud Unit.