A Nigerian man has been sentenced to 3 years in Jail for conspiring to commit mail and wire fraud. 42 year old, Emmanuel Ekhator was slammed with the jail term by District Court Judge, Middle District of Pennsylvania, Yvette Kane.
Ehkator was ordered to forfeit all his properties in Canada and contents of his several bank accounts in Nigeria. he was also ordered to pay $11,092,028 in restitution to his victims. Ehkator was part of a criminal syndicate that specialized in a fraudulent practice known as ''Attorney collection scam''. They contact U.S. and Canadian law firms by e-mail claiming to be individuals or businesses outside North America who were owed money by entities in the United States and asked for legal representation to collect the money.
Once the law firm agreed to represent the out-of-country client, the law firm would be contacted by the U.S. entity purportedly owing money with an offer to pay the client by cheque. The client would instruct the law firm to deposit the cheque in the law firm’s trust account, retain the law firm’s fee, and wire the remaining funds to accounts in Asia”.
The cheque that was then mailed to the law firm would be a counterfeit cheque, a fact that would be discovered only after funds from the law firm’s trust account had been wired to the Asian bank.
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