Security Experts:

Connect with us

Hi, what are you looking for?

SecurityWeekSecurityWeek

Cybercrime

Nigerian Extradited to U.S. Over Role in Major Cybercrime Scheme

A Nigerian citizen was extradited to the United States on charges related to his role in a major cybercrime scheme that involved business email compromise (BEC) attacks.

A Nigerian citizen was extradited to the United States on charges related to his role in a major cybercrime scheme that involved business email compromise (BEC) attacks.

The man, Babatunde Martins, 64, a resident of Accra, Ghana, will stand trial for wire fraud, money laundering, computer fraud, and aggravated identity theft, the United States Department of Justice announced.

Martins and others were indicted in August 23, 2017, for participating in a conspiracy to hack the servers and email systems of a Memphis-based real estate company in June and July 2016.

The cybercrooks used sophisticated anonymization techniques, such as spoofed email addresses and virtual private networks, to identify large financial transactions and start fraudulent email correspondence with business parties and divert funds to accounts they controlled.

A network of U.S.-based money mules was employed to redirect proceeds to final destinations in Africa.

As part of this BEC scheme, the cybercriminals caused losses of hundreds of thousands of dollars to companies and individuals in Memphis.

The indictment also alleges that the defendant engaged in romance scams, fraudulent check scams, gold-buying scams, advance-fee scams and credit card scams.

Martins allegedly employed various Internet scams to recruit a network of both complicit and unwitting individuals to ship and transfer the proceeds of these criminal activities, both money and goods, from the United States to locations in Africa.

The indictment also charges Martins with owning and operating a company called Afriocean LTD that he used to perpetrate these crimes.

Overall, the defendant and his co-conspirators are believed to have caused millions in losses to victims across the globe.

Five others have pleaded guilty to their involvement in the scheme. Two of them, Olufalojimi Abegunde and Javier Luis Ramos-Alonso, have been sentenced to 78 months and 31 months in prison, respectively.

Related: Eight Arrested for Roles in Email Fraud Schemes

Related: Loss to BEC Fraud Now Claimed to be $26 Billion

Related: Scammers Grab $2.5 Million From North Carolina County in BEC Scam

Written By

Ionut Arghire is an international correspondent for SecurityWeek.

Click to comment

Daily Briefing Newsletter

Subscribe to the SecurityWeek Email Briefing to stay informed on the latest threats, trends, and technology, along with insightful columns from industry experts.

Join this webinar to learn best practices that organizations can use to improve both their resilience to new threats and their response times to incidents.

Register

Join this live webinar as we explore the potential security threats that can arise when third parties are granted access to a sensitive data or systems.

Register

Expert Insights

Related Content

Cybercrime

Zendesk is informing customers about a data breach that started with an SMS phishing campaign targeting the company’s employees.

Cybercrime

The release of OpenAI’s ChatGPT in late 2022 has demonstrated the potential of AI for both good and bad.

Cybercrime

Satellite TV giant Dish Network confirmed that a recent outage was the result of a cyberattack and admitted that data was stolen.

Cybercrime

The changing nature of what we still generally call ransomware will continue through 2023, driven by three primary conditions.

Cybercrime

No one combatting cybercrime knows everything, but everyone in the battle has some intelligence to contribute to the larger knowledge base.

Application Security

PayPal is alerting roughly 35,000 individuals that their accounts have been targeted in a credential stuffing campaign.

Cybercrime

A recently disclosed vBulletin vulnerability, which had a zero-day status for roughly two days last week, was exploited in a hacker attack targeting the...

Cybercrime

The FBI dismantled the network of the prolific Hive ransomware gang and seized infrastructure in Los Angeles that was used for the operation.