Nine Nigerians have been arrested in the United States of America for defrauding businesses and individuals of more than $3.5 million.

The United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, Geoffrey S. Berman, and Homeland Security Investigations (HIS) Special Agent-in-Charge of the Tampa, Florida, Field Office of U.S., James C. Spero, announced on Thursday that the suspects committed the fraud through business email compromises, a Russian oil scam, and a romance scam.

Named among the suspects are Oluwaseun Adelekan a.k.a. Sean Adelekan, Olalekan Daramola, Solomon Aburekhanlen, Gbenga Oyeneyin,Abiola Olajumoke, Temitope Omotayo, Bryan Eadie, Albert Lucas and Ademola Adebogun.

Each of the suspects faces a maximum potential sentence of 20 years in prison.

U.S. Attorney Geoffrey S. Berman said: “As alleged, these defendants deployed three different email schemes to defraud their victims.

“The common denominator in all three schemes was the defendants’ alleged fleecing of their victims through fictitious online identities.

“The schemes allegedly earned the defendants $3.5 million – and also arrests on federal felony charges.”

HSI Special Agent-in-Charge James C. Spero said: “A transnational criminal organisation allegedly conducting illicit domestic and international wire fraud has been dismantled thanks to the hard work of HSI Tampa and Special Agents from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York.

“This case illustrates the unique investigative authority and international reach of HSI.”

As alleged in their indictment, from at least in or about July 2016, up to and including the present, the defendants participated in a scheme to defraud businesses and individuals through several categories of false and misleading representations, including but not limited to:

Sending victims email messages that appeared to be, but were not, from legitimate business counterparties that included instructions to the victims to wire payment to those seemingly legitimate business counterparties into bank accounts that were actually under the control of, and/or maintained by, Adelekan, Daramola, Aburekhanlen, Oyeneyin, Olajumoke, Omotayo, Eadie, Lucas, and Adebogun (the “Business Email Compromise Scam”);

Sending email messages and text messages to at least one victim offering an opportunity to invest in oil stored in Russian oil tank farms conditioned on that victim wiring upfront payments into bank accounts purportedly affiliated with the purported oil investment but actually opened by and under the control of Aburekhanlen, Olajumoke, and Oyeneyin (the “Russian Oil Scam”); and

Sending email messages and text messages to at least one victim from an individual (or individuals) purporting to be a female with romantic intentions toward the victim requesting, further to establishing a romantic relationship, the wiring of payment into a bank account under the control of Omotayo (the “Romance Scam”).