The U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ) announced the sentences in a statement on Wednesday.
Virginia, U.S. – Two Nigerian nationals, Franklin Ifeanyichukwu Okwonna and Ebuka Raphael Umeti, have been sentenced to prison in the United States for their roles in a large-scale wire fraud scheme.
The U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ) announced the sentences in a statement on Wednesday.
Okwonna, 34, was sentenced on September 3 by a federal judge in the Eastern District of Virginia to five years and three months in prison. He was also ordered to pay nearly $5 million in restitution.
He had pleaded guilty on May 20 to charges of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and aggravated identity theft for his involvement in a computer hacking and business email compromise (BEC) scheme that resulted in significant financial losses to multiple victims both in the U.S. and abroad.
His co-defendant, Ebuka Raphael Umeti, 35, was sentenced on August 27 to 10 years in prison and similarly ordered to pay nearly $5 million in restitution.
Umeti was convicted by a federal jury on June 13 on several charges, including conspiracy to commit wire fraud, three counts of wire fraud, conspiracy to cause intentional damage to a protected computer, and intentional damage to a protected computer.
According to court documents and evidence presented during Umeti’s trial, the fraudulent activities took place between February 2016 and July 2021. Umeti, Okwonna, and their co-conspirators sent phishing emails to businesses that appeared to be from trusted sources, such as banks or vendors.
When the victims opened these emails, their computers were infected with malicious software (malware) that allowed the perpetrators to gain unauthorized access to their systems and email accounts.
The defendants then used the sensitive information obtained through this access to deceive employees of the victim companies into executing wire transfers to accounts controlled by the conspirators. The scheme resulted in, or attempted to cause, over $5 million in losses to the targeted companies.
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