A 29-year-old Nigerian man whose email scams aimed to defraud businesspeople from Singapore to Switzerland out of millions of dollars was sentenced to five years in a US federal prison.
The United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, Geoffrey S. Newman, announced on Tuesday, September 11. See details
here
“Onyekachi Emmanuel Opara attempted to dupe thousands of victims into transferring money to him and his co-defendant in a phony email scheme,” said Geoffrey Berman.
Opara, 29, and a partner were arrested in South Africa in December 2016 and extradited to the US from Johannesburg in January of this year.
According to the New York FBI’s Complex Frauds and Cybercrimes Unit, he allegedly cooked up business email scams that targeted thousands of companies worldwide.
In these scams, Opara and fellow conspirators pretended to be supervisors at the target companies or third-party vendors and emailed company employees requesting payments or information.