A 35 year old Nigerian national has pleaded guilty in a federal court in Idaho to conspiracy to commit money laundering after taking part in online sextortion and romance fraud schemes that targeted about 150 people in the United States and produced more than 2.5 million dollars in criminal proceeds.
Olamide Shanu entered the plea this week. He is due to be sentenced on 15 December and faces a maximum term of 20 years in prison. Prosecutors said he personally made more than 2.5 million dollars from the frauds.
According to court papers, Shanu and others ran two related operations. In the sextortion scheme they typically approached men, persuaded them to send sexual images of themselves, and then threatened to circulate those images to the victims’ friends and family unless money was paid. One of the victims lived in Idaho. In the romance frauds they used false identities on social media to form apparent relationships, usually with older women and men, then invented urgent financial crises and persuaded the victims to send cash.
The proceeds were moved through peer to peer payment apps and several cryptocurrency wallets before being transferred to Nigeria.
US officials said the case formed part of the Justice Department’s Cyber Enabled Scam Initiative, which is intended to disrupt networks that use the internet to defraud people in America. The investigation was led by the United States Secret Service and the Boise Police Department, with help from the Department of Justice’s Office of International Affairs, the State Department and UK authorities.
Assistant Attorney General A Tysen Duva said the schemes exploited victims through fear, shame and false trust and stripped them of savings as well as dignity. US Attorney Bart M Davis for the District of Idaho said the extradition from Nigeria showed that those who commit such offences overseas can still be brought before an American court. Assistant Director Brent Daniels of the Secret Service described financially motivated sextortion as a particularly damaging crime that preys on personal vulnerability.
The Computer Crime and Intellectual Property Section of the Criminal Division, together with prosecutors in Idaho, handled the case. The section has obtained more than 180 convictions for cyber and intellectual property offences since 2020 and secured court orders returning more than 350 million dollars to victims.
By A.Ikechukwu
