The United States Department of Justice (DoJ) has secured the conviction of two Nigerian men, Temitope Bashua and Uchechukwu Gideon Eze, who received a combined sentence of four years and three months in jail for their involvement in various fraud schemes totaling $472,000.
According to separate statements from the US DoJ website, the convicted individuals obtained money through deceitful claims and Business Email Compromise (BEC).
The first statement reported that 29-year-old Bashua was sentenced to 30 months in prison after pleading guilty to cyber intrusion, romance fraud, and BEC schemes, among others.
It noted that between May 2020 and September 2022, Bashua and his co-conspirators submitted fraudulent benefit applications and illegally acquired over $290,000.
Following his arrest and guilty plea, he was sentenced by a district court on Thursday.
“US District Judge Stephanie A. Gallagher sentenced Temitope Bashua, 29, a citizen of Nigeria, to 30 months in prison, followed by two years of supervised release, for his role in a conspiracy and scheme to fraudulently obtain unemployment insurance benefits and Economic Injury Disaster Loans.
“According to his plea agreement, and other court documents, from May 2020 through September 2022, Bashua and others conspired to impersonate victims to obtain money by submitting fraudulent UI benefits claims. Bashua and his co-conspirators used the personally identifiable information without the victims’ knowledge or consent to submit fraudulent applications for UI benefits in Maryland and California.
“Additionally, in October 2020, as part of the conspiracy, co-conspirators submitted two fraudulent EIDL applications to the SBA for fictitious businesses using the PII of identity victims. As a result of the fraudulent EIDL applications, Bashua received more than $290,000 in the US.”
In the second statement, the US DoJ noted that Eze was sentenced to 21 months in prison and ordered to pay $182,201 in restitution.
According to this statement, Eze and his overseas co-conspirators executed a Business Email Compromise scheme that defrauded a small business out of $182,200.
It further detailed that after the co-conspirators created a nearly identical business email used by company representatives, they then impersonated the representative by emailing other businesses and instructing them to divert payments into a supposedly new business bank account.
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