Nigerian Jailed in $1 Million Phishing Scam Case

Nj.com reported on 20th May, 2015 quoting an announcement of Paul Fishman, U.S. Attorney, as "A 31 year old Nigerian man with numerous pennames has been sentenced for three years in prison for his role in a $1 million "phishing" scheme which involved the fraudulent use of government email accounts to buy office equipment."

Abiodun Adejohn, also known as Olawale Adeyemi and Abiodun Ade Jon, has been in prison since his arrest in Arizona on 24th Sept. 2013 and he had earlier pleaded guilty for one conspiracy involving wire fraud.

The modus operandi of Adejohn in this case is "phishing" attacks by sending fake e-mails and websites which imitated the genuine e-mails and web pages of U.S. government agencies like U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Employees of these agencies visited the fake web pages and submitted their usernames and passwords of email account.

Adejohn and his accomplices used these stolen credentials to gain entry into email accounts of employees to place fake orders for office products like printer toner catridges in the name of employee from vendors who were authorized to do business with agencies of U.S. government.

Adejohn and his associates directed the vendors to ship fake orders to individuals in New Jersey and other places to be repackaged and finally sent to overseas locations controlled by Adejohn and his associates. Once Adejohn received the consignment in Nigeria, he along with his associates sold the toner catridges to a different individual on black market for generating more profit.

Fisherman said that officials of EPA, the General Services Administration, the Pentagon, the FBI and the Commerce Department have started investigating.

The court also ordered him to pay $630,806 as a compensation for the government's losses.

Moreover, Abiodun Adejohn is not the only criminal to have confessed guilt in US court since the beginning of this year because in February 2015, Alex Yucel, the co-creator of the Blackshades malware also confessed guilt in a Manhattan federal court. Federal investigators said that the Swedish criminal distributed Blackshades to thousands of cybercriminals across the world damaging several computer users and hence faced up to 10 years imprisonment in addition to a fine of thousands of dollars as a penalty and compensation.

» SPAMfighter News - 5/29/2015