On Monday, U.S. District Court Judge Leo T. Sorokin sentenced 30-year-old Nigerian national Esogie Osawaru to six months in prison for his role in defrauding approximately 125 victims, most of whom were elderly. Osawaru stole over $1.3 million via various online scams.
According to the U.S. Attorney for the District of Massachusetts, Osawaru and his co-defendant, Nosayamen Iyalekhue, were involved in a series of romance, pandemic unemployment insurance, and other online scams designed to deceive victims into sending money to accounts controlled by the defendants. The Nigerian nationals used fake foreign passports in the names of aliases, bearing photos of themselves, to open bank accounts. Once the money was sent to these accounts, Osawaru and Iyalekhue rapidly withdrew the victims’ money from various bank branches and ATMs, often multiple times during a single day. The schemes also included collecting unemployment insurance in the name of others during the COVID-19 pandemic.
In contrast to Osawaru's six-month sentence, his co-defendant Iyalekhue received a considerably harsher penalty of 63 months in prison and three years of supervised release after pleading guilty to one count of wire fraud.
It's worth mentioning that Osawaru, also known as "Milk Anthony", had previously admitted to engaging in similar fraudulent activities, having been linked to Washington Employment Security Department fraud according to the Business Journal. Documents from the U.S. District Court for Massachusetts revealed that he forfeited up to $1.3 million in assets he may own as proceeds from unemployment insurance fraud schemes and other online scams. However, despite this admission, Osawaru was released on a cash bond of $10,000 and faced deportation proceedings.
Online fraud is a rapidly growing problem, with the FBI alone reporting that it received 791,790 complaints of suspected internet crime, with reported losses exceeding $4.1 billion, in 2020 according to their annual internet crime report.
