BEC Scammer Gets 25-Year Jail Sentence for Stealing Over $9.5 Million

A 46-year-old man in the U.S. has been sentenced to 25 years in
prison after being found guilty of laundering over $9.5 million
accrued by carrying out cyber-enabled financial fraud.

Elvis Eghosa Ogiekpolor of Norcross, Georgia, operated a money
laundering network that opened at least 50 business bank accounts
for illicitly receiving funds from unsuspecting individuals and
businesses after falling victim to romance frauds and business
email compromise (BEC^[1]) scams.

Ogiekpolor was charged by a federal grand jury in February 2022
with one count of conspiracy to commit money laundering and 15
counts of substantive money laundering. The scheme was operational
from October 2018 to August 2020.

According to the U.S. Justice Department (DoJ), Ogiekpolor
enlisted the help of eight “money mules” to open the phony bank
accounts under the names of non-existent companies, which were
subsequently used to stash the proceeds from their criminal
activities.

These included creating fictitious personas on online dating
sites to initiate conversations with potential targets, before
tricking them into wiring funds directly into one of the sham
accounts or mailing the cash to the money mules.

“Once the fraud proceeds posted to his accounts, Ogiekpolor
laundered the funds, including wiring hundreds of thousands of
dollars to overseas accounts, and withdrawing substantial amounts
in cash and cashier’s checks,” the DoJ said^[2], adding the scam
targeted retired widows or widowers.

In one instance of BEC compromise highlighted by the agency, a
victim business was deceived into making a payment to the tune of
“several hundreds of thousands of dollars” to what it believed was
a “long-standing vendor.”

BEC attacks are typically executed by sending spear-phishing
email messages that purport to be from a known source that has
ongoing contracts with the targeted victims and asking them to
transfer funds to a different account under the cybercriminals’
control.

Ogiekpolor’s sentencing follows the conviction of five of his
co-conspirators, all of whom have been accused of conspiracy to
commit money laundering and have since pleaded guilty to the
crime.

“There is no way we can make the victims of Ogiekpolor and this
network whole again, but we hope this sentence will at least give
them solace that people are being held accountable,” said Keri
Farley, special agent in charge of FBI Atlanta.