A 35-year-old Nigerian, Olamide Shanu, has pleaded guilty in the United States to conspiracy to commit money laundering after participating in sextortion and romance fraud schemes that defrauded about 150 Americans.
Shanu pleaded guilty on Monday in the District of Idaho, according to a statement issued by the US Department of Justice on Tuesday.
The Justice Department said Shanu and his co-conspirators made more than $2.5m from the schemes, which involved victims across the United States.
In the sextortion scheme, the conspirators typically targeted male victims and persuaded them to send sexual images of themselves.
They would then threaten to send the images to the victims’ friends and family unless money was paid.
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The conspirators also targeted older women and men through romance scams, using fake identities on social media to establish deceptive emotional relationships with their victims.
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👉 JOIN WHATSAPP CHANNELAccording to court documents, the conspirators would gain the victims’ trust, convince them that they had a romantic future together and then ask them for money, citing various supposedly urgent financial needs.
The proceeds from the schemes were laundered through peer-to-peer payment applications and several cryptocurrency wallet addresses before being transferred to co-conspirators in Nigeria, the department said.
“This case exposes a sophisticated international scheme that exploited Americans through sextortion and romance fraud, laundering millions in criminal proceeds,” Assistant Attorney General A. Tysen Duva of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division said.
Duva said the department’s Cyber-Enabled Scam Initiative was established to tackle such schemes and bring those responsible to justice.
The US Attorney for the District of Idaho, Bart M. Davis, said the guilty plea demonstrated efforts to prosecute cybercriminals regardless of where they operated.
“This guilty plea, involving more than $2.5 million in laundered proceeds, reflects the dedicated efforts of our prosecutors and law enforcement partners to disrupt international criminal networks, protect victims, and ensure that cyber-enabled crime does not go unanswered,” Davis said.
The case involved the US Secret Service and Boise Police Department, which are investigating the schemes.
Shanu is scheduled to be sentenced on December 15 and faces a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison.
A federal district court judge will determine his sentence after considering the US Sentencing Guidelines and other statutory factors.
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