US fraudster jailed over $300k business email compromise scheme

Adam Bannister 24 February 2022 at 13:20 UTC

Scheme unraveled when defendant tried to cash ill-gotten gains

A fraudster who tried to cash a $300,000 check deceptively obtained via a business email compromise (BEC) scheme has been jailed by a US court.

Oyedele Aro Benjamin, 27, of Chicago was given a two-year jail sentence and will be supervised by the US Probation Office for three years.

BEC scams typically involve spoofing or hacking into corporate email accounts in order to dupe corporate email recipients into approving payments and transferring funds to accounts controlled by fraudsters.

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According to a Department of Justice (DoJ) press release published yesterday (February 23), Benjamin traveled to Indianapolis in September 2018 and attempted to deposit a $300,000 check at Regions Bank.

However, the United States Postal Inspection Service realized that the check was illegally obtained through a BEC attack that targeted two Louisiana companies.

The ruse saw a scammer posing, via email, as a representative from one of the companies, and duping the same company into sending a $300,000 check intended for the other company to an address in Chicago.

Benjamin received the check and used a fraudulent driver’s license and fraudulent business registration information to open a business bank account under a fictitious name and business whose name resembled that of the intended, legitimate recipient.

When Benjamin sought to deposit the check in the fraudulent bank account the next day, Regions Bank was alerted to the fraud and successfully reversed the deposit before cash could be withdrawn.

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