VIRGINIA
A Nigerian national was sentenced Tuesday in Virginia to five years and three months in prison, officials stated.
The judge also ordered him to pay nearly $5 million in restitution for participating in a computer hacking and business email compromise scheme that caused over $5 million in losses to multiple victims in the United States and elsewhere.
Franklin Ifeanyichukwu Okwonna, 34, pleaded guilty on May 20 to conspiracy to commit wire fraud and aggravated identity theft for his role in the scheme.
Okwonna’s co-defendant, Nigerian national Ebuka Raphael Umeti, 35, was sentenced on Aug. 27 to 10 years in prison and ordered to pay nearly $5 million in restitution.
A federal jury found Umeti guilty on June 13 of conspiracy to commit wire fraud, three counts of wire fraud, conspiracy to intentionally damage a protected computer, and intentional damage to a protected computer.
According to court documents and evidence presented at Umeti’s trial, between February 2016 and July 2021, Umeti, Okwonna, and their co-conspirators orchestrated a scheme that resulted in millions of dollars in unauthorized wire transfers by sending phishing emails to victim businesses.
These emails were carefully crafted to appear as though they originated from trusted sources, such as banks or vendors.
Once the victims opened the attachments, their computers were infected with malicious software, or “malware,” allowing the defendants and their co-conspirators to gain unauthorized access to the victims’ computer systems and email accounts.
The defendants then exploited this access to obtain sensitive information, which they used to deceive employees at the victim companies into executing wire transfers to accounts controlled by the co-conspirators.
This scheme led to losses or attempted losses exceeding $5 million for the victim companies.
The FBI Washington Field Office investigated the case.
Senior Counsel Thomas S. Dougherty of the Criminal Division’s Computer Crime and Intellectual Property Section (CCIPS) and Assistant U.S. Attorney Laura D. Withers for the Eastern District of Virginia prosecuted the case.