A federal jury in Puerto Rico yesterday convicted a fifth individual for conspiracy to launder funds in connection with multiple wide-ranging wire, mail, and access device fraud schemes.
Oluwasegun Baiyewu was convicted of a money laundering conspiracy following a 22-day trial in San Juan.
According to court documents and evidence presented at trial, Oluwaseun Adelekan 40, and Temitope Omotayo, 40, both of Staten Island, New York; Ifeoluwa Dudubo, 37, of Austin, Texas; and Temitope Suleiman, 37, and Oluwasegun Baiyewu, 37, of Richmond, Texas, conspired to launder funds from different international organized fraud schemes, including romance, pandemic relief unemployment insurance fraud, and business email compromise scams.
These fraud schemes disproportionately impacted elderly or otherwise vulnerable Americans.
The Department of Justice will continue to identify and prosecute the fraudsters who design complex fraud schemes and the launderers that receive victim proceeds and make sure the crimes are profitable, said Assistant Attorney General Brett A. Shumate of the Justice Department’s Civil Division.
“The defendant participated in a money laundering scheme turning illicit gains into a facade of legitimacy, especially those involving seniors or other vulnerable people, and businesses in Puerto Rico and the United States,” said U.S. Attorney W. Stephen Muldrow for the District of Puerto Rico.
The criminals involved in this scheme thought there was safety in numbers, but the U.S. Postal Inspection Service “doesn’t stop until everyone involved in schemes that target older Americans is brought to justice”, said Inspector in Charge Ketty Larco-Ward of the U.S. Postal Inspection Service Boston Division.
Larco-Ward said, “The defendants lined their pockets by defrauding vulnerable members of our society through various schemes designed to entice their victims to give up their hard-earned cash. This conviction is proof that anyone involved with transnational crimes will be tracked down, exposed, and made to face the consequences.”
A superseding indictment against the five defendants alleged that in 2020 and 2021, the defendants worked together to profit from efforts to “clean” money from scams involving victims, many of whom were older adults, in California, Illinois, Washington, and Nevada, and business email compromise schemes affecting victim companies in Puerto Rico and Missouri.
After receiving the proceeds, according to the indictment, the defendants or their co-conspirators conducted hundreds of transactions with the funds to, among other things, purchase used cars that were shipped overseas to Nigeria.
The defendants will be sentenced before the Honorable Raúl M. Arias-Marxuach for the District of Puerto Rico.
