LOS ANGELES
Kingsley Osemwengie (Photo: Federal Government)
A prison inmate in Victorville who oversaw a scam to cash stolen checks got another nine years and two months tacked onto his prison sentence for conspiring to commit bank fraud, according to officials.
A postal Worker and co-defendant who stole warrants issued by L.A. County also plead guilty.
A federal judge on Monday sentenced Kingsley Osemwengie, 30, for orchestrating a fraud ring that attempted to negotiate millions of dollars in Los Angeles County warrants – which are essentially checks issued by the municipality – that had been stolen by a corrupt postal employee.
Osemwengie and longtime Las Vegas buddy Olubenga Badamosi, a Nigerian-born oxycodone dealer who lived in Milwaukie, headed a network that sold tens of thousands of the pills during a three-year span that began in 2008, according to the Oregonian newspaper.
In 2013, Osemwengie was sentenced to 17 years and six months in federal prison.
The corrupt postal employee – Sabrina Pittman, 44, a resident of Watts – plead guilty also on Monday to conspiring to commit bank fraud.
Osemwengie pleaded guilty in November in an indictment that also charged his brother, Nelson Osemwengie, and two other defendants. The other three defendants have pleaded guilty and are pending sentencing before Judge Klausner.
Members of the conspiracy recruited dozens of bank customers who were willing to provide their ATM cards and access to their accounts in exchange for a share of the proceeds.
The warrants were altered to change the name of payees to the names of the recruited account holders.
The warrants were deposited into the bank accounts, and members of the conspiracy withdrew as much money as they could before the banks learned the warrants had been fraudulently deposited, according to authorities.
When Osemwengie pleaded guilty, he specifically admitted that a stolen Los Angeles County warrant for $729,340 was deposited into an account at Bank of America in 2014.
Other federally-insured financial institutions that suffered losses included Chase Bank, Navy Federal Credit Union and Wells Fargo Bank.
“This scheme sought to victimize county taxpayers and banks insured by the United States,” said U.S. Attorney Eileen M. Decker. “This crime warranted extending the term of imprisonment by more than nine years.”
The court found that Osemwengie’s scheme attempted to cause losses of more than $1.5 million, which represents the face value of the checks that were fraudulently deposited, according to officials.
However, authorities are continuing to assemble information related to losses in this case.
Judge Gary Klausner scheduled a restitution hearing for April 11, at which time he will determine the victims’ actual losses, and Osemwengie will be ordered to repay victims.
The investigation in this case also revealed that co-conspirators attempted to use a drone to smuggle a cell phone into the prison yard at the Federal Correctional Institute in Victorville.
The attempt was unsuccessful.
Pittman is scheduled to be sentenced on May 9.