Nigerian Citizen Facing Charges over Phishing Attacks against U.S Higher Educational Institutions
A jury of the federation after prosecuting Olayinka Olaniyi a Nigerian citizen for 3 days convicted him, 9th August, 2018, following accusations that he connived towards committing aggravated ID-theft along with computer fraud and wire fraud. Another defendant Damilola Solomon Ibiwoye associated with Olaniyi after pleading guilty, 31st January, 2018, to the same accusations was punished with imprisonment for 3-yrs-and-3-months and then supervised release for 3-yrs more.
Both Olaniyi and Ibiwoye together carried out many phishing scams against universities and colleges within USA, notably University of Virginia, Georgia Institute of Technology as also a few other United States institutions. Although Nigerian citizens the two accused committed their offences from the Malaysian City of Kuala Lumpur from where they faced extradition to USA for prosecution.
Olaniyi along with Ibiwoye sent phishing electronic mails focusing on employees of universities and colleges. Soon as they stole passwords and login details of the employees, they used the information for filching payroll deposits via altering bank account details of the victims because the payroll deposits were made into those bank accounts. Further, as the accused accessed the university servers via using the stolen passwords and login credentials, they managed getting hold over W2 forms of the staff members so they could file deceptively crafted income tax returns. This way they tried stealing $6m-and-more.
Georgia's Northern District Office of U.S Attorney in one press release describes the filched money as directed and deposited into various bank A/Cs of USA, while clues revealed that the accused reached the said A/Cs via executing romance scams described as ruses wherein fraudsters pretend to be partners on dating websites as well as applications for acquiring their victims' faith. During the course of the scams, the fraudsters place certain request for cash to be deposited inside the victims' A/Cs followed with asking for their entire account info such as A/C number, passwords, routing number as well as replies to security queries. Within the current instance, all such info was subsequently utilized for channeling the entire amount of stolen funds via the said A/Cs followed with onto offshore places.
October 22, 2018, is the date for sentencing Olaniyi. » SPAMfighter News - 8/27/2018 |
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