Nigerian man sentenced to 20 years for role in $50 million fraud scheme

GULFPORT, Miss. – A Nigerian national illegally present in the United States was sentenced Thursday to 20 years in federal prison for his role in a conspiracy that sought to steal $50 million via a variety of complex mass-marketing fraud schemes. The criminal enterprise was investigated by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) Gulfport along with the U.S. Postal Inspection Service, South African and Canadian police, and HSI special agents in Atlanta, Jackson, Miss., Charleston, S.C., and South Africa.

Teslim Olarewaju Kiriji, 30, a Nigerian citizen residing in Brownsburg, Indiana, received the maximum penalty for his conviction on the felony charge of conspiracy to commit money laundering. In addition to his 20-year prison sentence, U.S. District Judge Sul Ozerden ordered Kiriji to pay a $10,000 fine and to serve three years supervised release following the completion of his sentence. Kiriji will also face removal from the United States.

According to court documents, Kiriji admitted in his guilty plea to being part of an international organization involved in multiple online fraud schemes that illegally used victims’ banking and credit information obtained from romance scams, reshipping scams, fraudulent check scams and work-at-home scams, along with bank, financial and credit card account takeovers. Kiriji used and distributed victims’ personal, bank and credit card information from at least 2004 until his arrest in May 2014.

The investigation into Kiriji began in October 2011 when HSI Gulfport special agents were informed of a Mississippi woman who was the victim of a sweetheart scam. The victim received a package in the mail from a man she had been communicating with romantically; the man requested that she reship merchandise to an address in Pretoria, South Africa. Investigation subsequently revealed the merchandise had been purchased using stolen credit card information from numerous persons across the United States.

This case was prosecuted by Southern District of Mississippi Assistant U.S. Attorneys Annette Williams and Scott Gilbert along with Robert Tully of the Organized Crime Gang Section of the Department of Justice.