The American Federal Bureau of Investigation has stated that a Nigerian hacker Obinna Obioma has been jailed for 51 months by a New York federal judge for a fraud scheme that swindled $6.5 million from businesses in the U.S. and elsewhere. The sentenced 31-year-old Obinna ran a scheme in which he instructed hackers to hack into computers and email accounts of individuals around the world using malicious software.
As part of his guilty plea, Obioha admitted that, while in Nigeria, he worked with and instructed others to hack into computers and email accounts used by dozens of victims in the United States and around the world. The organization infiltrated victims’ computers and email accounts using malicious software (“malware”). After monitoring victims’ information to identify imminent commercial transactions, Obioha and his associates created knockoff email addresses that appeared similar to – but varied slightly from – victims’ legitimate email addresses. Obioha and his associates used those bogus email accounts to send fraudulent invoices to victims, instructing them to wire funds to bank accounts controlled by Obioha and his associates, under the pretense that the wires were payments for actual deals that had been previously negotiated by the victims. Obioha met his waterloo on October 6, 2016, after flying from Lagos, Nigeria, to JFK International Airport and has been in custody since then.
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