In April of last year, a 29-year-old Nigerian native who was extradited to the US from Canada, entered a guilty plea to charges of wire fraud and money laundering through business email compromise (BEC).

Simon-Ebo said that he had planned, in 2017, to breach employee and company email accounts while living in South Africa in collusion with people in the United States.

The con artists then sent emails pretending to be from reliable partners by using these accounts to get in touch with companies using fake sender addresses.

The victims sent money to bank accounts under Simo-Ebo and his accomplices’ control as a consequence of the emails’ payment demands and wiring instructions.

After then, in order to hide the money trail and finally withdraw cash, the con artists would transfer the funds to several accounts.

To further conceal the true source of the monies, the money launderers also wrote checks to other people and businesses using cashier’s checks.

The plea deal said that the fraudsters made one million out of over seven million that they tried to steal, indicating a high success ratio of around 1 to 7.

The whole amount of damages incurred by the victims, or $1,072,306, will also need to be reimbursed by the BEC scammer.