Busted!!! Nigerian docked over email scam in Dallas, US

A 28-year-old Nigerian man, Amechi Amuegbunam Colvis, who resident in the United States on a student visa, has been reportedly charged with fraud in connection with a sophisticated email scam targeting-businesses, Dallas Morning News reports.

Colvis, according to reports, was arrested in Baltimore sometime in August 2015 and had since remained in Federal custody in Dallas.

Colvis had tricked the employees into wiring him money by transposing a couple of letters in the actual company email, authorities said, adding that he is accused of sending emails that looked like forwarded messages from top company executives to employees who had lured the authorities to release money.

The complainant, Luminant Cooperatives, an electric utility company in Dallas, said, “an employee with the authority to wire money received an email from someone who appeared to be a company executive, but the email domain name had two letters transposed.

For example, someone created the email with a domain name of the company.

“The duped employee wired $98,550 to a bank account outside Texas.

“The FBI subpoenaed information about the email account and learned it was created by someone named Amechi Amuegbunam Colvis,” the complaint added.

“Agents determined that person was Colvis and that he scammed another company out of $146,550.

“The Dallas FBI quickly learned that this was a widespread scheme,” the complaint noted.

The FBI reports say it has identified five other conspirators who live in Nigeria who are subjects of the investigation.

In these scams, “money mules” are employed to accept the initial transfers into their personal bank accounts.

They then are told to quickly transfer the money elsewhere, usually to a bank account outside the U.S.

The money usually ends up in Asian banks, including those in China and Hong Kong,” the FBI alert said.

“The criminals have become experts at imitating invoices and accounts. Agents say the fraudulent emails are typically well worded and specific to the type of business being targeted. The phrases, “code to admin expenses” and “urgent wire transfer,” are frequently used,” the FBI states.

Reports further revealed that the FBI had issued an alert about the new Cyber-attack it called the “Business Email Compromise.”

According to the FBI, “It is a growing fraud that is more sophisticated than any similar scam the FBI has seen before,” adding that “it is the work of organized crime groups from Africa, Eastern Europe and the Middle East.

Federal officials say more than 7,000 U.S. businesses have been scammed out of a total of about $740 million.

An FBI agent, Maxwell Marker who oversees an organized crime section in a recent bulletin, reportedly said: “It’s a prime example of organized crime groups engaging in large-scale, computer-enabled fraud, and the losses are staggering.

“The Dallas investigation began in 2013 when two North Texas companies reported falling victim to the scheme, each losing about $100,000, according to an FBI complaint,” Marker stated.

The FBI said criminal groups usually target businesses that have foreign suppliers or regularly make wire transfer payments.

“They have excellent tradecraft, and they do their homework,” Marker said. “The days of these emails having horrible grammar and being easily identified are largely behind us.”

The accused, however, is now being reportedly charged with scamming 17 North Texas companies out of more than $600,000 using the said technique, (sophisticated email scam targeting-businesses-Business Email Compromise).

If convicted, however, reports say, Amechi may face up to 30 years in prison and a fine of up to $1 million.

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