The U.S. Attorney’s office in Delaware charged Olugbenga Lawal with being a major money launderer for a Nigerian-based international criminal organization that specialized in Business Email Compromise (#BEC) and Romance Scam. Lawal was charged with receiving more than $3 million USD (that would be more than ₦2,8 Billion!) and sending funds to Nigeria both through money transfer, but also buy purchasing and shipping more than $600,000 in vehicles.
Olugbenga Lawal was born November 30, 1990 in Lagos, Nigeria. After attending boarding school starting at age 13, he got a bachelor’s degree in Business Management from Ahmadu Bello University in Zaria, Nigeria. He taught for one year in the National Youth Core in 2013. In 2015, he stayed with an uncle in New York for three months, then moved to Chicago where he married Myjerrier Lawal and the two moved to Indiana, where he lived when he was arrested.
Early in the case, Lawal’s lawyer tried to get the judge to allow him to be free pending bail. At that point there was a court hearing to determine if he had to stay in jail until the trial, or if he could be released and monitored. This type of hearing is called a Detention Hearing. During that hearing, some interesting facts came out!
From the Detention Hearing Transcript:
The Defendant’s importance in the criminal organization is demonstrated by the fact that he received money directly from defrauded victims as well as from lower-ranking members of the criminal organization. It is believe that, as a higher-ranking member of the organization, Defendant received a “cut” of the fraudulently obtained proceeds and, after taking that “cut,” helped to launder the proceeds and repatriate the funds to West Africa largely by purchasing cars with the fraudulent proceeds and shipping them overseas to other members of the criminal organization.
The criminal organization apparently has obtained and used fraudulent identification and travel documents to aid in its internet-based fraud and money laundering efforts. The Government proffers that the organization has obtained false state driver’s licenses and false passports, both to create the online personas used to perpetrate its romance scams and to register shell business entities and open bank accounts under untraceable aliases.
In short, the nature of the criminal organization and its crimes has provided Defendant with resources
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