A Nigerian national has been convicted of participating in a $1.5 million email compromise (BEC) scam after a jury found him guilty on all counts.
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Feds say Ebuka Raphael Umeti, 35, perpetuated the scam with two alleged crime partners, using a combination of social engineering and malware to pull off the million-dollar BEC scheme. A BEC scam involves phishing emails and deception to get businesses and organizations to send money or valuable data to attackers, usually via email.
According to the DoJ, Umeti became involved in BEC fraud as early as February 2016, when one of his alleged co-conspirators, Nigerian national Franklin Ifeanyichukwu Okwonna, allegedly sent Umeti a phishing email template. The partners began to see success in 2018, picking up $571,000 from a New York wholesaler and $400,000 from a Texas metal supplier.
In the following years, the fraudsters began domain spoofing, signing up for VoIP numbers and communicating over the gaming-focused chat platform Discord.
