A Nigerian, Olumide Ogunremi who lived in the Newark area of the United States and helped run a computer hacking and identity theft scheme has been docked in connection with a one million dollars cyber fraud.
Ogunremi, who also went by the name, “Tony Williams,” faces up to 20 years in prison if convicted of the single count of wire fraud. He was docked in a Federal court on Thursday and pleaded not guilty to the one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud.
According to documents filed in this case and statements made in court, the US department of Justice in New Jersey, published a press statement on their website which reads:
“From July 2013 through December 2013, Ogunremi and other conspirators perpetrated a computer hacking and theft scheme targeting United States government agencies’ email systems and Government Services Administration (GSA) vendors.
“The ring employed “phishing” attacks, which used fraudulent e-mails and websites that mimicked the legitimate e-mails and web pages of U.S. government agencies, such as the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Unwitting employees of those agencies visited the fake web pages and provided their e-mail account usernames and passwords.
“Ogunremi and his conspirators used these stolen credentials to access the employees’ e-mail accounts in order to place fraudulent orders for office products, typically printer toner cartridges, from vendors who were authorized to do business with U.S. government agencies.
“Ogunremi and his conspirators directed the vendors to ship the fraudulent orders to individuals in New Jersey and elsewhere to be repackaged and ultimately shipped to other locations overseas, which were controlled by Ogunremi and his conspirators. Once the orders were received in Nigeria, Ogunremi and his conspirators sold the toner cartridges to another individual on the black market for profit.
“On June 10, 2014, Abiodun Adejohn, a/k/a “James Williams,” 30, of Nigeria, pleaded guilty to one count of wire fraud conspiracy, and was later sentenced to three years in prison.
“The wire fraud conspiracy carries a maximum potential penalty of 20 years in prison and a maximum $250,000 fine.”
Phishing attacks are the most common form of cyberattacks faced by the federal government. Pentagon email systems, for example, thwart some 36 million phishing-related emails each day.
In recent months, agencies have taken a proactive approach, alerting the public of potential phishing schemes before they blow up. In August, the IRS publicized a phishing scheme where fraudsters had created a website similar to IRS.gov in hopes of spreading malware to taxpayers.
In June, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency warned the public that bad actors were purporting to send notification from the cyber agency in another effort to spread malware.
