US Based Nigerian Sentenced To Spend 4 Years In Jail For Internet Fraud

U.S. Chief District Judge Beth Phillips on Friday sentenced a 27-year-old Nigerian, Segun Prosper Otaru, who lived in St. Robert, Missouri, United States to four years and three months in federal prison without parole for internet fraud.
Otaru was sentenced almost a year after he was first indicted in November 2018 by a federal grand jury.
According to the US Department of Justice statement, Otaru was sentenced by U.S. Chief District Judge Beth Phillips on Friday.
The court also ordered him to pay $25,056 in restitution, and to forfeit the same amount to the government.
Otaru is a legal permanent resident of the United States.
According to court documents, Otaru entered the United States in April 2013, under apparently fraudulent pretences; contrary to the requirements of his student visa, he did not even begin his studies in the United States. The year after entering the United States, Otaru obtained lawful permanent status through marriage to a citizen.
On May 2, 2019, Otaru pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and one count of aiding and abetting the theft of public money. According to court documents, over the course of his five years in the United States, Otaru used 13 aliases and multiple bank accounts opened under false identities in order to move funds and perpetrate various frauds as a part of an organized crime network.
He admitted that, at least as early as 2016, he participated in a scheme to defraud people through various scams, such as posting internet advertisements on sites such as Craigslist.com for goods, services, and rental accommodations. Conspirators sought to induce individuals responding to the advertisements to pay for the goods and services, which they had no intention to provide.
For example, conspirators used existing pictures and descriptions of properties found from legitimate websites to create fraudulent Craigslist postings under properties for rent. When victims responded to the advertisement, conspirators instructed them to send a deposit in order to hold the property.
Conspirators also defrauded business wholesalers by tricking them into wiring funds into accounts they controlled as purported “shipping fees” for merchandise they purchased using stolen credit card numbers. After using a stolen credit card number to purchase items from the victim businesses, conspirators claimed the merchandise needed to be shipped to a foreign country. Conspirators insisted on using their own shipper and instructed victims to charge the full amounts for the merchandise plus shipping fees to the stolen credit card numbers. They instructed victims to send the shipping fees to “their shipper” at the provided bank account maintained by the conspirators, including Otaru’s accounts.