29 Year Old Nigerian Phishing Scammer Jailed for 3 Years

A 29-year-old Nigerian national was jailed on Friday 13 December 2013, for his part in a sophisticated phishing scam that targeted hundreds of UK students, using their compromised data to steal in excess of £1.5 million. He has been sentenced to three years imprisonment for conspiracy to defraud and nine months imprisonment for money laundering, to run consecutively.

Olajide Onikoyi, 29, living in Manchester, UK was among a number of cyber criminals who targeted students by sending them emails inviting them to update details on their student loan account via a link to a bogus website.

When the site was accessed by the unsuspecting victims, Onikoyi was able to gain unauthorised access to their bank accounts and extract large amounts of money. One victim had £19,000 taken from their account. Onikoyi laundered £393,000 from 238 victims in total.

The scam was identified following a successful operation by detectives from the now-disbanded MPS Police Central e-Crime Unit.

Detective Chief Inspector Jason Tunn, of the MPS Cyber Crime Unit, said: “My officers worked doggedly to secure Onikoyi’s conviction. They examined numerous leads to identify members of this phishing gang, of which Onikoyi was a key member.

“He played a significant role in the scam by systematically targeting British students and UK financial institutions in order to steal large amounts of money that were then dispersed across numerous bank accounts.”

On 8 December 2012, working with colleagues from Greater Manchester Police, detectives executed search warrants at addresses in London and Manchester. A number of computers and associated storage media were seized from the properties and their contents examined, leading the investigators to identify Onikoyi’s involvement.

He was subsequently arrested when a further series of warrants was executed with the Serious Organised Crime Agency in Manchester on 9 January this year.

Detectives seized his computer, from which they recovered chat logs from cyber crime forums. These revealed Onikoyi was conspiring with others from Russia, Lithuania and the UK in order to compromise computers and associated bank accounts.

He was charged the following day and subsequently pleaded guilty to conspiracy to defraud UK financial institutions of £393,000 and money laundering on 10 December.

On 9 December, Ruth Smith-Ajala, 44 (25.04.69), a Nigerian national of Redlands Way, SW2 was sentenced to five years imprisonment for conspiracy to defraud, at Southwark Crown Court. A further five individuals were arrested as part of the investigation. Of those, four were released with no further action.


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