*The Case of the Con Turned Con Artist
*Jailed Additional 309 Years
He was already in jail for fraud and other crimes, yet he managed to lead a massive, two-year identity theft and bribery scheme that earned him a separate 309-year prison sentence—more than twice that of crooked financier Bernie Madoff, and reportedly the fourth-longest in the history of U.S. white-collar crime.
His name is Robert Thompson, and his story is an eye-opening one for consumers and businesses who take the risk of sharing personal information over the telephone.
It began in a Louisiana state prison, where Thompson began stealing a raft of personal information—dates of birth, social security numbers, bank account numbers, credit cards numbers, etc.—from more than 61 individuals, churches, financial institutions, and businesses. That information enabled him to steal from the victims’ bank accounts and use their credit to buy big-ticket items—like appliances, cell phones, and big-screen TVs. He even attempted to purchase a luxury SUV. Most of these items ended up with his partners in crime—accomplices inside and outside prison.
The ruses: Thompson used various methods to gather personal information, but one of his tried-and-true ploys involved calling a bank and pretending to be an elderly stroke victim who had been hospitalized. “I don’t have my checkbook with me and need access to my bank account,” he would claim. Most banks didn’t fall for it, but some did. Thompson also called individual victims directly—sometimes saying he was a state trooper who needed to verify personal details after an identity theft arrest.
The operation: Thompson initially made his calls on prison phones. Knowing he could only make collect calls—in accordance with prison rules—he had his outside accomplices obtain three-way calling services on their personal phones, accept collect calls from Thompson, and dial whatever number he wanted. Since many of the calls were long-distance, he also contacted phone companies—using a phony identity—and had those calls charged to the accounts of various churches.
Eventually, prison officials got wind from us of what Thompson was doing, and he was transferred to a special lockdown area in order to keep him away from the phones. But he paid a $10,000 bribe to a corrections officer assigned to his cell block to use the officer’s personal cell phone. So his shenanigans continued.
Thompson also had his accomplices—including a former guard he met at another prison—withdraw money from the phony bank accounts he had set up, pick up merchandise he had ordered, and/or let their home addresses be the delivery points.
The FBI entered the picture in mid-2006 after being contacted by a car dealership that had $50,000 stolen from its bank account. After an extensive investigation, we identified Thompson as the culprit. At least eight of his co-conspirators also have been charged as part of the overall investigation, which was worked closely with state and local law enforcement and corrections officials.
But old habits die hard—after pleading guilty and expressing remorse for his crimes during a 2009 court appearance, Thompson was back working the phones the very next week. The judge had little sympathy during Thompson’s sentencing.
The case is a lesson for us all. “Be crime smart” when it comes to sharing personal information—yours or someone else’s. Don’t give it out over the telephone unless you have verified the identity of the caller.
Source:FBI
Friday, April 23, 2010
Wednesday, April 21, 2010
National Security Adviser,Gen.,Gusau Accuses CBN/EFCC Of Double Standard
Some economic analysts and foreign investors were indeed shocked by the bombshell from the National Security Adviser (NSA), General Aliyu Mohammed Gusau against activities of Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) and the Economic and Financial Crime Commission (EFCC) in Nigeria.
The session was moderated by the Secretary to the Government of the Federation, Mahmud Yayale Ahmed, and the Head of Service of the Federation Stephen Oronsaye.
The Office of National Security Adviser, according to the findings, organised a seminar at its headquarters to brief the newly inaugurated Ministers on their new responsibilities and security consciousness. In addition, the new cabinet members were made to realise that “absolute loyalty is not to those that nominated them but to the person that appointed them into the office.”
The session was moderated by the Secretary to the Government of the Federation, Mahmud Yayale Ahmed, and the Head of Service of the Federation Stephen Oronsaye.The participants were baffled when the National Security Adviser, General Mohammed who was a former Presidential aspirant at the PDP Primary pointedly accused the current managements at the CBN and EFCC of double standard and selective justice respectively.
On the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), Gusau criticised the current policies of the monetary institution by asserting that the intervention seemed to have damaged economic activity in the banking sector to the detriment of the larger society. The National Security Adviser pointedly stated that “the fragility of the economy further dictates that offenders be interdicted without damaging the sector”
The utterance of the National Security Adviser is already a clear signal on the direction of the current administration of Acting President Goodluck Jonathan which also has its political significance between loyalists of State Governors and that of Yar’Adua in the present Federal Executive Council (FEC). There is a feeler that the Office of the National Security Adviser might have taken the responsibility to hunt for economic crimes suspects, while the service of a no-nonsense anti-corruption fighter may be recruited to stop some retired military officers and top politicians suspected of corrupt practices from the 2011 Presidential Election.
Economic Confidential
Fake Igbo- Chief in EFCC’s Net Over $243,000 Fraud
A notorious 38 -year- old fraudster, claming to be an Igbo traditional title holder, Sam Nwankwo, has been arrested by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, (EFCC) for defrauding a 57 -year -old man, Mr. Collins to the tune of $243,000.
In October last year, Chief Nwankwo who claims to be the Ogbuefi of Opokssi from Ohozarra in Ebonyi State, which several aliases included Barrister Nwankwo, Hon. Nwankwo and Governor Brother, was alleged to have traveled to Abidjan, Cote D’ Ivoire to meet members of his syndicate namely; Michael Adekunle (alias Doctor), Kadjo Aneje (alias Jean De Baptist) and sold a dummy to the victim who had been living in that country for over 20 years.
The fraudsters went to the victim who is a businessman, with a proposal to help him secure a soft loan to expand his business. The victim who deals in petroleum products reasoned with them and agreed to collect the loan from Adekunle who was introduced to him as a United States of America-based physician. The introduction was done by Kadjo, a long time friend of the victim. And to make the loan offer irresistible, Adekunle promised to give the victim a $2.5million facility at the low interest rate of five percent. After the victim had accepted to take the loan, Adekunle told him that he had already secured the loan. To convince his prey, he showed him documents he purportedly used to secure the loan. But he said the victim could only access it if he agrees to pay the sum of $23,000 as commitment fee. The victim promptly paid.After payment, Collins expected the loan to be given to him, but there was a twist. Instead, Adekunle told him that the money was in Swiss vault and that since the money was idle, the victim had to pay $100,000 as demurrage before the money could be released to him. Desperate to get the loan, the victim paid again. Not satisfied, the sucker demanded for additional $60,000 and promised that the expenses would be deducted from the loan.
After a while, Adekunle again told the victim that the fund actually belonged to one Chief Sam Nnamani and that for Chief Nnamani to release the money, the victim had to pay another $60,000 as agreement; assuring that within two days the money would be paid to him. Again, the victim complied.
But instead of paying the money, the story changed. Adekunle told the victim once more, that the money actually belonged to one late Justice Okeke (nee Nnamani), the sister to Chief Nnamani and that the Judge was poisoned because she used Nnamani as her next –of- kin. At this juncture the suspect, Chief Nwankwo emerged from the shadows, to play his part in this brazen script of trickery. He introduced himself as a younger brother to Chief Nnamani and late Justice Okeke and promised to use his influence and connection in influential circles to help him secure the loan. After visiting the victim in Abidjan and extorting some money in hard currency from him, he invited the victim who hails from Delta State to Nigeria ostensibly to facilitate the release of the loan. But as he was about to collect more money from the victim, he was arrested by operatives of the EFCC.
When confronted with these facts, the suspect claimed that he only took $3,900 from the victim in two installments and that the money was meant for his transportation to Abidjan . He confessed that he promised to introduce the victim to one Alhaji Attah who would have given the victim the loan he wanted but regretted that the victim could not meet the condition for granting the loan. He explained that he was to be paid $7,500 as commission for introducing the victim to the said Alhaji Attah.
When his house was searched, framed computer generated photographs he claimed to have snapped with prominent Nigerians like General Ibrahim Babangida and the former Inspector-General of Police Mr. Mike Okiro and others, were recovered. During interrogation, Nwankwo who lives in Enahoro Street , Lekki Phase 1 in Lagos confessed that he showed the photographs to the victim in order to convince him that he was well connected and influential. On how he came about the photographs, he claimed that the one he snapped with Okiro was taken in 2006, when Okiro was honoured at a reception in Night Shift Coliseum, Ikeja, Lagos; while the one with Babangida was purportedly taken in 2006 when he went with his group, Nigeria Youths Organization to persuade IBB to contest the presidential election in 2007. But looking at the photographs critically, it was discovered that he super-imposed his picture on those of the prominent Nigerians to appear as if he knew them intimately in order to convince his preys to part with their money, having already dropped the names of these prominent Nigerians.
Other items recovered from the suspect include multiple identity cards with different names and titles. In all the identity cards, he was decked in wig and gown, suggesting that he was a practicing lawyer. He even identifies himself as Barrister Nwankwo. In his ECOWAS passport, he wrote legal practitioner against the column for profession. In yet another of his identity cards, he called himself Honourable Sam .N. Nwankwo and the organization he represents as Sustainable Nigeria Youth Coalition. The other card bears Anti- Apartheid and Crime Bureau of which he is the Zonal coordinator.
On why he was dropping the name of prominent Nigerians, he said that he wanted to be great. He claimed to be a Law student of the National Open University (NOUN) Akoka, which was why he was wearing wig and addressing himself as a barrister. But when he was asked his faculty at the University he said he was in the faculty of criminal law. He offered that he was a 'used car dealer and foodstuff seller' 'at Oshodi, before veering into the lucrative line of fraud.
Source:Economic Confidential
Tuesday, April 13, 2010
Nigerian-American In $.5m Health Scam
*Ijewere Pleads Guilty to Submitting Nearly Half-a-Million
Dollars in False and Fraudulent Claims to Medicare
The owner and operator of a Los Angeles durable medical equipment (DME) company pleaded guilty yesterday to submitting nearly one-half of a million dollars in false claims to Medicare.
Sylvester Ijewere, 49, pleaded guilty today before U.S. District Court Judge Dale S. Fischer in the Central District of California to one count of health care fraud.
Ijewere, the owner of Maydads Medical Supply, admitted that between June 2007 and October 2009, he schemed with others to purchase fraudulent prescriptions and medical documents.
Ijewere admitted that he used those documents to submit false claims to Medicare for expensive, high-end power wheelchairs, and other DME.
Approximately 50 percent of the Medicare beneficiaries to whom Ijewere claimed Maydads supplied with power wheelchairs and other equipment lived more than 100 miles from Maydads’ Los Angeles-area offices.
Ijewere admitted that he knew the beneficiaries who received the power wheelchairs did not need them or the other equipment they received from Maydads.
Ijewere also admitted that he knew the doctor and beneficiary information he used to support Maydads’ false and fraudulent claims to Medicare came from fraudulent medical clinics and patient recruiters.
As a result of this scheme, Ijewere admitted that he submitted or caused the submission of approximately $471,345 in false and fraudulent claims to Medicare through Maydads.
At sentencing, scheduled for Aug. 16, 2010, Ijewere faces a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine.
Yesterday’s result was announced by Assistant Attorney General Lanny A. Breuer of the Criminal Division; U.S. Attorney André Birotte Jr. for the Central District of California; Tony Sidley, Assistant Chief of the California Department of Justice, Bureau of Medi-Cal Fraud and Elder Abuse (Cal DOJ); Glenn R. Ferry, Special Agent-in-Charge for the Los Angeles Region of the HHS Office of Inspector General (OIG); and Steven Martinez, Assistant Director in Charge of the FBI’s Los Angeles Field Office.
The case is being prosecuted by Trial Attorney Jonathan T. Baum of the Criminal Division’s Fraud Section and Assistant U.S. Attorney Kerry C. O’Neill of the Central District of California.
The case was brought as part of the Medicare Fraud Strike Force, supervised by the Criminal Division’s Fraud Section and the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Central District of California.
Since their inception in March 2007, Strike Force operations in seven districts have obtained indictments of more than 500 individuals who collectively have falsely billed the Medicare program for approximately $1.1 billion. In addition, the HHS Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, working in conjunction with the HHS OIG are taking steps to increase accountability and decrease the presence of fraudulent providers.
Dollars in False and Fraudulent Claims to Medicare
The owner and operator of a Los Angeles durable medical equipment (DME) company pleaded guilty yesterday to submitting nearly one-half of a million dollars in false claims to Medicare.
Sylvester Ijewere, 49, pleaded guilty today before U.S. District Court Judge Dale S. Fischer in the Central District of California to one count of health care fraud.
Ijewere, the owner of Maydads Medical Supply, admitted that between June 2007 and October 2009, he schemed with others to purchase fraudulent prescriptions and medical documents.
Ijewere admitted that he used those documents to submit false claims to Medicare for expensive, high-end power wheelchairs, and other DME.
Approximately 50 percent of the Medicare beneficiaries to whom Ijewere claimed Maydads supplied with power wheelchairs and other equipment lived more than 100 miles from Maydads’ Los Angeles-area offices.
Ijewere admitted that he knew the beneficiaries who received the power wheelchairs did not need them or the other equipment they received from Maydads.
Ijewere also admitted that he knew the doctor and beneficiary information he used to support Maydads’ false and fraudulent claims to Medicare came from fraudulent medical clinics and patient recruiters.
As a result of this scheme, Ijewere admitted that he submitted or caused the submission of approximately $471,345 in false and fraudulent claims to Medicare through Maydads.
At sentencing, scheduled for Aug. 16, 2010, Ijewere faces a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine.
Yesterday’s result was announced by Assistant Attorney General Lanny A. Breuer of the Criminal Division; U.S. Attorney André Birotte Jr. for the Central District of California; Tony Sidley, Assistant Chief of the California Department of Justice, Bureau of Medi-Cal Fraud and Elder Abuse (Cal DOJ); Glenn R. Ferry, Special Agent-in-Charge for the Los Angeles Region of the HHS Office of Inspector General (OIG); and Steven Martinez, Assistant Director in Charge of the FBI’s Los Angeles Field Office.
The case is being prosecuted by Trial Attorney Jonathan T. Baum of the Criminal Division’s Fraud Section and Assistant U.S. Attorney Kerry C. O’Neill of the Central District of California.
The case was brought as part of the Medicare Fraud Strike Force, supervised by the Criminal Division’s Fraud Section and the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Central District of California.
Since their inception in March 2007, Strike Force operations in seven districts have obtained indictments of more than 500 individuals who collectively have falsely billed the Medicare program for approximately $1.1 billion. In addition, the HHS Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, working in conjunction with the HHS OIG are taking steps to increase accountability and decrease the presence of fraudulent providers.
Sunday, April 11, 2010
Even In Death, African Gays Are Stilll Abused
*Case in Senegal shows the
intensity of homophobia in Africa
THIES, Senegal - Even death cannot stop the violence against gays in this corner of the world any more.
Madieye Diallo's body had only been in the ground for a few hours when the mob descended on the weedy cemetery with shovels. They yanked out the corpse, spit on its torso, dragged it away and dumped it in front of the home of his elderly parents.
The scene of May 2, 2009 was filmed on a cell phone and the video sold at the market. It passed from phone to phone, sowing panic among gay men who say they now feel like hunted animals.
"I locked myself inside my room and didn't come out for days," says a 31-year-old gay friend of Diallo's who is ill with HIV. "I'm afraid of what will happen to me after I die. Will my parents be able to bury me?"
A wave of intense homophobia is washing across Africa, where homosexuality is already illegal in at least 37 countries.
In the last year alone, gay men have been arrested in Kenya, Malawi, Sierra Leone and Nigeria. In Uganda, lawmakers are considering a bill that would sentence homosexuals to life in prison and include capital punishment for 'repeat offenders.' And in South Africa, the only country that recognizes gay rights, gangs have carried out so-called "corrective" rapes on lesbians.
"Across many parts of Africa, we've seen a rise in homophobic violence," says London-based gay-rights activist Peter Tatchell, whose organization tracks abuse against gays and lesbians in Africa. "It's been steadily building for the last 10 years but has got markedly worse in the last year."
Desecration of bodiesTo the long list of abuse meted out to suspected homosexuals in Africa, Senegal has added a new form of degradation — the desecration of their bodies.
In the past two years, at least four men suspected of being gay have been exhumed by angry mobs in cemeteries in Senegal. The violence is especially shocking because Senegal, unlike other countries in the region, is considered a model of tolerance.
"It's jarring to see this happen in Senegal," says Ryan Thoreson, a fellow at the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission who has been researching the rise of homophobia here. "When something like this happens in an established democracy, it's alarming."
Even though homosexuality is illegal in Senegal, colonial documents indicate the country has long had a clandestine gay community. In many towns, they were tacitly accepted, says Cheikh Ibrahima Niang, a professor of social anthropology at Senegal's largest university. In fact, the visibility of gays in Senegal may have helped to prompt the backlash against them.
Wedding sparks a backlashThe backlash dates back to at least February 2008, when a Senegalese tabloid published photographs of a clandestine gay wedding in a suburb of Dakar, the capital. The wedding was held inside a rented banquet hall and was attended by dozens of gay men, some of whom snapped pictures that included the gay couple exchanging rings and sharing slices of cake.
The day after the tabloid published the photographs, police began rounding up men suspected of being homosexual. Some were beaten in captivity and forced to turn over the names of other gay men, according to research by the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission.
Gays immediately went into hiding and those who could fled to neighboring countries, including Gambia to the south, according to the New York-based commission. Gambia's erratic president declared that gays who had entered his country had 24 hours to leave or face decapitation. Many returned to Senegal, where they lived on the run, moving from safehouse to safehouse.
In March 2008, Senegal hosted an international summit of Muslim nations, which prompted a nationwide crackdown on behaviors deemed un-Islamic, including homosexuality.
The crackdown also coincided with spiraling food prices. Niang says political and religious leaders saw an easy way to reach constituents through the inflammatory topic of homosexuality.
"They found a way to explain the difficulties people are facing as a deviation from religious life," says Niang. "So if people are poor — it's because there are prostitutes in the street. If they don't have enough to eat, it's because there are homosexuals."
Muslum sermonsImams began using Friday sermons to preach against homosexuality.
"During the time of the Prophet, anytime two men were found together, they were taken to the top of a mountain and thrown off," says Massamba Diop, the imam of a mosque in Pikine and the head of Jamra, an Islamic lobby linked to a political party in Senegal's parliament.
"If they didn't die when they hit the ground, then rocks would be thrown on them until they were killed," says Diop, whose mosque is so packed during Friday prayer that people bring their own carpets and line up outside on the asphalt.
Sermons like Diop's were carried on the mosque's loudspeakers as well as in Senegal's more than 30 newspapers and magazines.
Around this time, in May 2008, a middle-aged man called Serigne Mbaye fell ill and died in a suburb of Dakar.
His children tried to bury him in his village but were turned back from the cemetery because of widespread rumors that he was gay. His sons drove his body around trying to find a cemetery that would accept him. They were finally forced to bury him on the side of a road, using their own hands to dig a hole, according to media reports.
The grave was too shallow and the wind blew away the dirt. When the decomposing body was later discovered, Mbaye's children were arrested and charged with improperly burying their father.
In the town of Kaolack three months later, residents exhumed the grave of another man believed to be gay. In November 2008, residents in Pikine removed a corpse from a mosque of another suspected homosexual and left it on the side of the road.
The grave-robbing has shocked even hardened gay activists, such as Nigerian Davis Mac-Iyalla.
"People have done horrible things (in Nigeria). I have seen people spit on coffins and people spit on graves," he said. "But it stopped there."
Diallo's deathAmong the people who appeared in the photograph published from the gay wedding was a young man in his 30s from Thies. He was an activist and a leader of a gay organization called And Ligay, meaning "Working together," which he ran out of his parents' house.
He was HIV-positive and on medication.
When the tabloid published the photograph, Diallo went into hiding, according to a close friend who asked not to be named because he too is gay. Unable to go to the doctor, Diallo stopped taking his anti-retrovirals. By the spring of 2009, he was so ill that his family checked him into St. Jean de Dieu, a Catholic hospital in downtown Thies, says the friend.
He was in a coma when he died at 5:50 a.m. on May 2, 2009, according to the hospital's records. Although the hospital has a unit dedicated to treating HIV patients, the young man's family never disclosed his illness, according to the doctor in charge.
Several gay friends tried to see Diallo in the hospital but were told to stay away by his family, says the friend.
When the AP tried to speak to Diallo's elderly father at his shop on the main thoroughfare in Thies, his other children demanded the reporter leave. One sister covered her face and sobbed. Another said, "There are no homosexuals here."
Hours after he died, his family took Diallo's body to a nearby mosque, where custom holds the corpse should be bathed and wrapped in a white cloth. Before the family could bathe him, news reached the mosque that Diallo was gay and they were chased out, says the dead man's friend. His relatives hastily wrapped him in a sheet and headed to the cemetery, where they carried him past the home of Babacar Sene.
"A man that's known as being a homosexual can't be buried in a cemetery. His body needs to be thrown away like trash," says Sene. "His parents knew that he was gay and they did nothing about it. So when he died we wanted to make sure he was punished."
Thursday, April 8, 2010
Nigerian New Ministers, Portfolios and States of Origin
| *Their Portfolios and States of Origin |
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