Investigators connected him to at least 13 different aliases, 12 fake businesses and 40 fraudulent bank accounts. They believe there could be more.
A Nigerian man living in Plano, Texas, Babatope Joseph Aderinoye, has been sentenced to 34 years in federal prison for a fraud scheme that victimised multiple senior citizens, as well as the Community Independent School District and a charity that helps families of the terminally ill.
According to information from the US Attorney’s Office, 30-year-old Aderinoye was convicted on charges of conspiracy to commit bank fraud, wire fraud and money laundering, as well as aggravated identity theft and mail fraud.
He committed the crimes by obtaining fake passports using other people’s identities. He then used those passports to set up fake businesses and bank accounts.
Investigators connected him to at least 13 different aliases, 12 fake businesses and 40 fraudulent bank accounts. They believe there could be more.
He and his co-conspirators used various e-mail compromise scams and telephone compromise scams to defraud the victims.
They would pose as someone familiar and encourage their victims to wire funds to fraudulent bank accounts.
Once the money arrived in Aderinoye’s fraudulent accounts, he would withdraw the funds and transfer them to a bank account he had set up in Nigeria.
From June 2018 through September 2019, over $6.7 million was deposited into alias accounts of Aderinoye, with almost all of those funds being withdrawn or wired internationally.
Acting US Attorney Nicholas J. Ganjei said: "The types of fraud committed by Mr. Aderinoye and his co-conspirators not only have lasting ramifications for the affected victims, but also threaten the integrity of our country’s financial systems.
"While today’s sentence is a decisive victory for the victims of Mr. Aderinoye and his co-conspirators, the overall fight against cyber fraud continues. EDTX will do everything in its power to bring other cyber criminals to justice, and to recover ill-gotten gains for those victimised."