Mugshot of Ayeni taken at Baldwin County Jail, Alabama
By Deborah Nnamdi
A Nigerian national Babatunde Francis Ayeni, 33, has been sentenced to 10 years in U.S. federal prison for stealing almost $20 million from hundreds of people through cyber fraud.
A press release by the U.S. Attorney’s Office, Southern District of Alabama, revealed that Ayeni, who had been living in the U.K., was convicted for his role in a business email compromise scheme that targeted real estate transactions.
He pleaded guilty to wire fraud charges in April and was sentenced this week.
According to court documents, Ayeni worked with two other people in Nigeria and the United Arab Emirates, who were his defendants, Feyisayo Ogunsanwo and Yusuf Lasisi.
They allegedly sent phishing emails with malicious links and attachments to title companies, real estate agents, and real estate attorneys across the U.S.
Through the phishing emails, the hackers accessed employee login information, which they used to monitor email accounts for messages indicating a buyer was preparing to make a payment.
Ayeni and his co-conspirators would then contact the buyer from the compromised email address and provide wire information linking to their financial accounts.
Among the more than 400 victims of the scheme, 231 of them were unable to reverse the wire transactions and lost the full amount sent to the hacker-controlled accounts. In total, $19,599,969.46 was lost.
The thefts were particularly painful for dozens of people who lost all of the money they had saved up to purchase a home. Multiple people provided victim impact statements to the court and testified about the shame, despair, and depression they felt after the losses.
One victim said more than $100,000 was stolen from him after he tried to buy his elderly father a home following a Parkinson’s diagnosis.
The indictment mentions at least two victims who lost more than $114,000 and $42,000, respectively.
The hackers used the funds to purchase Bitcoin on Coinbase, which was then sent to three addresses.
“Cyber-enabled crimes can cause substantial and lasting harm to victims in an instant,” said U.S. Attorney Sean P. Costello.
“Criminals across the world may believe that they are causing no harm to their victims and that they are safe behind their keyboards, but this case proves otherwise.”
Lasisi and Ogunsanwo are still at large, but Ogunsanwo was last tracked spending $40,000 of the stolen funds at a Louis Vuitton store in a Dubai mall.
