The Treasury Department said Tuesday it has frozen the assets of six Nigerians responsible for massive internet scams, including defrauding businesses and running romance schemes that prey on the most vulnerable Americans, bilking them of their savings.
Among the six Nigerians are some of the masterminds who run the scams, as well as the tech workers who managed hundreds of bank accounts, which are used to funnel the money from the targets.
Nigerian scammers became a painful joke in the early days of the internet with the “Nigerian Prince” operation, but they’ve since branched into other types of fraud.
The business scams involve impersonating executives at a company and emailing underlings, ordering them to make immediate payments to an account — but the account would be controlled by the scammers.
At one point the ringleader of the scam had contact information trees for nearly 1,000 businesses, and the scammers could hit 100 businesses a day.
The romance fraud scams are even sadder, targeting lonely and often aged or widowed Americans with fictitious dating profiles. The scammers build online relationships, then begin to ask for money.
The six scammers sanctioned by the Treasury Department on Tuesday bilked at least $6.3 million from the business fraud, and more than $1 million from the romance schemes, officials said.
Those sanctioned are Richard Uzuh, Michael Olorunyomi, Alex Ogunshakin, Felix Okpoh, Nnamdi Benson and Abiola Kayode. All of them are Nigerian citizens, Treasury said.
Under the sanctions, the Office of Foreign Assets Control blocked access to the men’s property and assets in the U.S.
