A five (5) man gang of robbers have been charged with counts of money laundering over a highly sophisticated email scam to steal £3 million from a businessman in London. The scandal was a clear case of email fraud and use of information theft to swindle funds.
All five suspects have been tried in a UK court. The scam was so complicated, it took over four years for the Metropolitan Police’s Cyber crime unit to bring the culprits to justice.
The act involved the altering of the email account of a business man (the victim), and using phishing methods to send and receive emails using his email address without his knowledge. The culprits sent out several emails to the victims bank, using fake invoices to request vendor payments to accounts they had created to ultimately swindle the funds.
All five suspects were convicted at Southwark Crown Court on Wednesday, 22 May following a five-month trial. They were sentenced at the same court on Friday, 21 June.
Anthony Oshodi, 49 (1.1.1970) of Dumbreck Road, SE9 was found guilty of one count of money laundering, one count of possession of a false identify document and three counts of possession of articles for use in fraud. He was jailed for six years and six months.
Oshodi fled three weeks into the trial but was convicted and sentenced in absence.
Foyjul Islam, 51 (20.12.1967) of Aberfeldy Street, E14 was found guilty of one count of money laundering. He was jailed for two years and six months.
Mohammed Siddique, 32 (12.10.1986) of Chancellor Way, Dagenham, RM8 was found guilty of three counts of money laundering. He was jailed for six years.
Mohammed Rafeek, 34 (13.7.1984) of Hockley Avenue, E6 was found guilty of two counts of money laundering. He was jailed for two years and six months.
Meharoof Muttiyan, 35 (27.8.1983) of Hockley Avenue, E6 was found guilty of money laundering. He was jailed for one year and eight months.
In the space of about 5 days, between January 8 and 13, 2015 approximately 1.3 million was transferred into three accounts, one of which belonged to Muttiyan.
Muttiyan tried to launder the money through layering and integration in an effort to mask the source and to alter the trail. He used vehicles such as petrol station, insurance claims company, and even a computer business owned by the gang.
The 5 year investigation was thorough, as detectives used banking, phone and computer records to identify each suspect. Over the course of several months, they had gathered key evidence, money trails, communication patterns and devices owned and linked to the fraudsters.
During the home raid, they seized over 50 electronic items including computers, mobile phones and digital storage devices.
They found communication trails on the devices of messages between Anthony Oshodi, 49, and Mohammed Siddique, 32, discussing the stolen money. Siddique also exchanged instructions with Foyjul Islam, 51, on how to launder the money and evade being caught.
The investigation revealed Oshodi’s links to the hacking of the victim’s e-mail account and his outsourcing of the laundering of £600,000 of the funds to Siddique.
He was linked to additional laundering offences after two envelopes were seized from his address during the raid. One contained five stolen cheques, the largest of the three being worth £51,000, and the other contained five stolen bankcards, one with a balance of £28,000.
His computer also had copies of 1,000 passports of other people and bank cards which were used to create false identities.
Oshodi fled three weeks to his trial, but the court was able to convict him in his absence irrespective, due to the overtly sufficient evidence gathered during investigation. He is now a wanted person and the Cyber Crime Unit is notifying the public to aid in his search.
“We will continue to pursue Oshodi and bring him to justice for his part in this crime. I would ask anyone with information regarding his whereabouts to contact the Cyber Crime Unit directly on 0207 230 8475. Alternatively, you can call Crimestoppers anonymously on 0800 555 111.”
