Crime

Per the Office of the U.S. Attorney, District of Maryland –Kosi Goodness Simon-Ebo, age 29, a Nigerian national residing in South Africa, pleaded guilty yesterday to conspiracy to commit wire fraud and conspiracy to commit money laundering (with co-conspirators in Maryland), related to a business email compromise (“BEC”) scheme with intended losses of the conspiracy of more than $6 million.  Simon-Ebo arrived in the United States on April 12, 2023, after being extradited from Canada.

According to his plea agreement, from February 2017 until at least July 2017, Simon-Ebo conspired with others to perpetrate a BEC scheme.  Specifically, Simon-Ebo and his co-conspirators, including co-conspirators residing in Maryland, gained unauthorized access to email accounts associated with individuals and businesses targeted by the conspirators and sent false wiring instructions to the victims’ email accounts from “spoofed” emails, which are emails with forged sender addresses, to deceive the victims into sending money to bank accounts controlled by perpetrators of the scheme, called “drop accounts.”

According to the evidence presented at trial, from January 2018 through November 2019, Avboraye-Ibginedion was part of a conspiracy to defraud elderly victims by persuading them to send thousands of dollars in cash to members of the conspiracy, falsely stating that the money would be used to help the victims’ relatives pay legal or other expenses for crimes and other incidents that had not actually occurred.  Conspirators targeted elderly victims throughout the United States, calling and posing as a police officer, lawyer, or other individual, falsely telling the victim that a relative, typically the victim’s grandchild, had been incarcerated in connection with a car accident or traffic stop involving a crime, and needed money—often tens of thousands of dollars—for bail, legal fees, and other expenses.

Witnesses testified that during the telephone calls, the conspirators directed victims to send cash to particular addresses via an overnight delivery service.  The conspirators even posed as the victims’ relatives to further induce them to send the cash.  Once the victims did send money, the conspirators called the victims asking for more cash, regularly obtaining tens of thousands of dollars from the retirement savings of victims.  To prevent the victims from sharing the information with anyone, the conspirators told the victims that a “gag order” had been placed on the case requiring secrecy, or that the situation was embarrassing for the grandchild and they didn’t want anyone else to know about it.