Two Nigerians based in the United States, Chijioke Timothy Odimegwu and Harafat Mogaji, have been sentenced to a combined 189 months in federal prison for their roles in an international cyber intrusion scheme that defrauded businesses of more than $2.4m.
The two, who were residents of Delaware in the US, were sentenced on September 25, 2026, after being convicted over their roles in the scheme.
The sentence was announced by US Attorney David Waterman of the Southern District of Iowa, in a statement issued by Public Information Officer MacKenzie Tubbs on Tuesday.
According to Tubbs, both convicts were members of the US Air Force when they and their co-conspirators attacked business victims across the country for nearly two years using email spamming and phishing campaigns to steal usernames and passwords from employee email accounts.
The stolen credentials, alongside spoofed email addresses mimicking victims or their business partners, were used to redirect payments to accounts controlled by the conspiracy.
Tubbs stated that Odimegwu and Mogaji, working with co-conspirators in the US and abroad, fraudulently diverted more than $1.68m in a wire transfer sent by a victim in Iowa City, Iowa, to a bank account in Chicago controlled by the conspiracy.
Leave a comment