MINNEAPOLIS — At the federal courthouse in Minneapolis on Monday, the leader of an enormous fraud scheme targeting both businesses and ordinary people was sent to prison to join his co-defendant.
The defendants are Stephen Oseghale and Olumide Obidare — Nigerian nationals who were living in the U.S.
They worked together for five years starting in 2016, stealing from people using online phishing and romance scams.
In the phishing scams, they would get businesses to click on phony links to compromise email addresses, then pose as companies actually doing business with them.
One Minnesota company wired $838,000 to a phony account, thinking they were paying a legitimate bill.
The romantic scams involved more time and complexity. It involved posing as someone looking for a relationship online, targeting victims all over the country.
The scammers made their stories more believable by getting phony foreign passports and driver's licenses or stealing the identities of real people.
Their lies included things like needing to pay employees before moving to the U.S. to marry the victim.
And those fake passports and licenses helped them set up bank accounts to use, making it easier to fool the victims into paying them.
One older victim in Florida wrote to the judge: "Being involved in the money scam has changed my personality. I'm more subdued, and worry someone might find out what an embarrassment I am. I don't sleep as well, worry about money matters, and how I will survive on my own."
One of the scammers was sentenced this week to 11 years in prison. The other received more than six years. They're both ordered to pay the money back.
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