Nigerian On FBI Most Wanted List For Stealing $44m

The United States Federal Bureau of Investigation, FBI has added a Nigerian, Mr. Tobechukwu Enyinna Onwuhara, 30, to its list of ‘Most Wanted Fugitives.’

According to a report on America’s Most Wanted, the Bureau said ‘Tobechi Onwuhara is a criminal mastermind’ who in less than three years stole $44 million dollars from banks in the United States using sophisticated methods including stealing bank customer’s personal information, Home Equity Lines of Credit details and account numbers.

FBI agents say Onwuhara was born in Houston and sent to live with his wealthy Nigerian father, Prince Doris Onwuhara who the Bureau say is a ‘well-known con man who made a fortune from the notorious Nigerian 419 scheme’ before returning to the United States when he reached his teenage years in 1999.

Having settled in the southern state of Texas, he got a job with US lender, Capital One Financial Corporation where authorities believe he gained insider knowledge on how to work the US financial system.

His first brush with the law happened in April 2002 when he was arrested by Lewisville city police in Lewisville, Texas after police got a tipoff that he may be using stolen identification to steal money from credit card accounts. When police raided his apartment, they found stolen credit card account numbers, fake driver’s licenses and materials used to forge identification.

Same year in December in the western state of Seattle, FBI said ‘Onwuhara walked into a local bank and tried to max out the cash withdrawal limit on a stolen credit card’ but fled the bank when he sensed trouble. He was said to have jumped into a waiting car driven by a friend of his, Abel Nnabue and they led Seattle police on a high-speed chase but were eventually caught when they tried to flee on foot.

Both men were charged, convicted and sentenced to two years in a Seattle prison but spent only eight months of their sentence for good behaviour.

After their release, they relocated to Texas and went low for a while until sometime in 2005 when the real estate market was at an all time high and Home Equity Lines Of Credit loans became available. Though it was harder to steal from Home Equity Lines of Credit, Onwuhara and his co-conspirators found a way around it.

FBI say Onwuhara painstakingly researched home owners credit reports to see if they opened home lines of credit accounts and how much they had available. At this time in the real estate market, it was very common to find homeowners with $300, 000 - $ 400, 000 in home equity.

Onwuhara impersonated such homeowners after learning their passwords and home phone numbers through extensive research.

The Nigerian acquired multiple prepaid phone lines and wireless internet cards to prevent anyone from successfully tracing their numbers. He then also signed up to a spoofing service which allowed a home owner’s number appear on the bank representative’s caller ID when he called a bank to request a wire transfer from the account to a home owner’s regular checking account before the funds are eventually wired to accounts in Asia and then the monies would go to a Hawala in Africa.

‘Hawalas’ are funds transfer systems that are not regulated instead, they operate on trust. ‘Brokers or Hawalanders would take a cut and then transfer the money to an African Bank, eventually returning to a US bank,’ according to America’s Most Wanted.

Most of the funds returning to the United States came through accounts belonging to Precious Matthews or one of the other conspirators.

Investigators say Onwuhara made most of the calls himself but when an account belonged to a female, he would get his girlfriend, Precious Matthews to make the call while other co-conspirators would be delegated other duties including finding new home owners with equity in their homes.

According to FBI records, Onwuhara and his crew had stolen more than $20 million dollars before the bureau were notified of the scam and by the time the FBI penetrated their well-organized syndicate and learned their identity, they had stolen an additional $20 million dollars.

To learn their identity, the FBI contacted Verizon Wireless, a prepaid wireless company after it learned they were using prepaid internet services provided by the company to log into bank accounts and were able to obtain surveillance videos of three men paying for the service at one of the provider’s stores.

In the spring of 2008, the FBI got a break when they also found out that Onwuhara was using a spoofing service and they contacted the provider who made more than 1500 audio recordings available to them. As expected, most of the recordings were conversations between Onwuhara and various bank representatives, but unfortunately for Onwuhara someone from his crew had also used the phone to call a pharmacy pretending to be a doctor and ordered a prescription for Tobechi Onwuhara. This was a huge lead for the FBI. When they ran Onwuhara’s name, there was a match in their database where they found out he had been arrested before for bank fraud.

When they matched his photo with the surveillance videos obtained from the telecommunications company, they believed they had their man.

Gradually, they started their investigations and tried to learn the identity of his co-conspirators. This was when they discovered that Onwuhara had left Miami for Nigeria with a brief stopover in New York.

The FBI waited for Onwuhara and his travelling companions to return to the country and decided to stop him at the airport after he had rerouted his ticket several times.

The Bureau said they wanted him to believe he was being questioned as a possible terrorist and he fell for it by giving them information that eventually linked him to the fraud.

Before August 1, 2008, FBI agents already knew Onwuhara and his girlfriend, Matthews lived in their $5000 a month mansion near Miami in Florida. As they were making their way to a Florida casino with their crew on that day, agents and local police decided they had enough evidence to take them in. While they were effecting their arrest, agents realized that Onwuhara had entered the casino and believed Matthews sent a text message to him that they were being arrested and he managed to get away.

Authorities say they have not been able to track him down since.

FBI said before they took the gang down, Onwuhara would spend about $50, 000 a night in a strip club up to three times in a week and usually stayed at various five star hotels whenever he made his frequent travels.

Onwuhara according to the Bureau has stashed cash abroad and also shipped many luxury cars to Nigeria- all paid for in cash.

They believe he is hiding in either Canada; Miami, Florida; Atlanta, Georgia; or New Jersey.

His co-conspirators have been sentenced to various jail terms:

Henry ‘Uche’ Obilo, 30, Miami: Sentenced to 88 months in prison.

Abel Nnabule, 34, Dallas: Sentenced to 54 months on Jan. 30, 2009.

Precious Matthews (Onwuhara’s girlfriend): Sentenced to 51 months on Feb. 13, 2009.

Brandy Anderson, 31, Dallas, Sentenced to two years of supervised probation and 40 days of community confinement on Feb. 20, 2009.

Ezenwa Onyedebelu, 21, Dallas, Sentenced to 37 months on Feb. 27, 2009.

Daniel Orjinta, 43, Nigeria: Sentenced to 42 months on March 06, 2009.

Paula Gipson, 34, Dallas, Sentenced to 15 months on September 04, 2009.

courtesy:THEWILL with  Additional information courtesy of AMW.

Bill Gates No Longer World's Richest Man

For the third time in three years, the world has a new richest man. Riding surging prices of his various telecom holdings, including giant mobile outfit America Movil, Mexican tycoon Carlos Slim Helu has beaten out Americans Bill Gates and Warren Buffett to become the wealthiest person on earth and nab the top spot on the 2010 Forbes list of the World's Billionaires.
Slim's fortune has swelled to an estimated $53.5 billion, up $18.5 billion in 12 months. Shares of America Movil, of which Slim owns a $23 billion stake, were up 35% in a year.
That massive hoard of scratch puts him ahead of Microsoft cofounder Bill Gates, who had held the title of world's richest 14 of the past 15 years.
Gates, now worth $53 billion, is ranked second in the world. He is up $13 billion from a year ago as shares of Microsoft rose 50% in 12 months. Gates' holdings in his personal investment vehicle Cascade also soared with the rest of the markets.
Buffett's fortune jumped $10 billion to $47 billion on rising shares of Berkshire Hathaway. He ranks third.
The Oracle of Omaha shrewdly invested $5 billion in Goldman Sachs and $3 billion in General Electric amid the 2008 market collapse. He also recently acquired railroad giant Burlington Northern Santa Fe for $26 billion.
In his annual shareholder letter Buffett wrote, "We've put a lot of money to work during the chaos of the last two years. When it's raining gold, reach for a bucket, not a thimble."
Many plutocrats did just that. Indeed, last year's wealth wasteland has become a billionaire bonanza. Most of the richest people on the planet have seen their fortunes soar in the past year.
This year the World's Billionaires have an average net worth of $3.5 billion, up $500 million in 12 months. The world has 1,011 10-figure titans, up from 793 a year ago but still shy of the record 1,125 in 2008. Of those billionaires on last year's list, only 12% saw their fortunes decline. U.S. billionaires still dominate the ranks--but their grip is slipping. Americans account for 40% of the world's billionaires, down from 45% a year ago.
The U.S. commands 38% of the collective $3.6 trillion net worth of the world's richest, down from 44% a year ago.
Of the 97 new members of the list, only 16% are from the U.S. By contrast, Asia made big gains. The region added 104 moguls and now has just 14 fewer than Europe, thanks to several large public offerings and swelling stock markets.
The new billionaires include American Isaac Perlmutter, who flipped Marvel Entertainment to Disney for $4 billion last December. The Spider-Man mogul netted nearly $900 million in cash and 20 million shares of Disney in the transaction.
Also new to the ranking: 27 billionaires from China, including Li Shufu, whose automaker, Geely, announced plans to buy Swedish brand Volvo from Ford in December. The deal is expected to close in March 2010.
Finland and Pakistan both welcomed their first billionaires.
For the first time China (including Hong Kong) has the most billionaires outside the U.S. with 89.
Russia has 62 billionaires, 28 of them returnees who had fallen off last year's list amid a meltdown in commodities. Total returnees to the list this year: 164.
Eleven countries have at least double the number of billionaires they had a year ago, including China, India, Turkey and South Korea. Thirty members of last year's list fell out of the billionaire's club. Moguls who couldn't make the cut: Iceland's Thor Bjorgolfsson, Russia's Boris Berezovsky and Saudi Arabia's Maan Al-Sanea.
Another 13 members of last year's list died. Among the deceased: real estate developer Melvin Simon and glass tycoon William Davidson.

AIR RAGE

*Governor Daniel's Aide Went Berserk,
  Beat Passenger On Board IRS Flight

* Culprits will be prosecuted, says NCAA

*Case reported to Police

There was a dramatic scene in the early hours of today(Wednesday) when one of the aides of Governor Gbenga Daniel of Ogun State,Nigeria allegedly beat a passenger on board an IRS flight at the Lagos airport.In retaliation, some other  passengers on board the flight pounced on the Governor's aide and dealt with him severely.

The passengers, who proved uncontrollable at the terminal, told reporters that they would fight the case with their last blood since ‘the manhandled passenger did not commit any offense that warranted the manhandling’.

One of the passengers narrated that their flight which took off from Abuja airport for Lagos could not land at Lagos domestic terminal due to unfavourable weather but returned to base in Abuja after it hovered for some minutes in Lagos airspace.

She stated that as they prepared to return to Lagos this morning morning with passengers taking their seats, one of the passengers who had business class ticket went straight to take his seat at the business class area when one of the aides of Governor Gbenga Daniel, asked him to vacate the seat saying it was reserved for the Governor.

The passenger, it was learn't explained that he also bought the same business class seat and could seat anywhere in business area but the aide allegedly told him to vacate the area for the governor and this entourage, a situation which caused a brouhaha from take-off to landing.

He explained that when Daniel eventually came on board, his aides allegedly dragged the passenger out of the business area which he had paid for and was forced to sit in the economy.

And after the aircraft landed, it was gathered that the passenger was again dragged out of the aircraft and allegedly beaten, a situation which attracted the attention of security officers attached to MMA2.

At the MMA2, the Chief security officer and ADC attached to Daniel were seen telling the security officers that the passenger ‘embarrassed the governor on board and should suffer the consequence’.

“I am the chief security officer of the governor, we are not dragging this case because anything but for the embarrassment he caused the governor’, he told the police officers.

The aides, who accused the passenger of calling the governor ‘stupid’, eventually took the case to the Beesam police station when it appeared the security officers could not resolve it.

Another passenger, who accused the officials of the airline onboard of refusing to intervene, said he had to go into the cockpit to talk to the Pilot to intervene when the issue became very serious.

“We need to tell the whole world that we all have equal right anywhere both on air and on ground”, he stressed.

However, Benedict Ifeanyi, Murtala Muhammed Airport police public relations officer told reporters that the case had been transferred to the Deputy Commissioner of Police at the international airport adding that he received the report.

Spokesman for the Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA) Sam Adurogboye said the matter was yet to be reported to the authority, but described the incident as air rage that was capable of leading to accident.

He described the situation as horrendous and against all international aviation law, stressing that the culprits could be prosecuted for endangering passengers’ lives.