by Paul Adams 9jabook's 4.1.9 Buster
Coming Soon Expose of Top 20 YahooYahoo "ChairMen" of Naija origin in the diaspora with names and "Pictures" !
Adeniyi Adeyemi, 27, of Brooklyn, New York, was charged last week in a 149-count indictment for allegedly using his position as a computer technician to steal the identities of over 150 employees of the Bank of New York Mellon and to subsequently defraud charities, non-profits, and other organizations for more than $1.1 million over an eight year period.
The crimes with which Adeyemi is charged -- grand larceny, identity theft, money laundering, scheme to defraud, computer tampering, and unlawful possession of personal identification information -- allegedly took place between November 1, 2001 and April 30, 2009.
According to the Manhattan District Attorney's Office, Adeyemi worked as a computer technician at the Bank of New York on 1 Wall Street and at other bank locations around Manhattan. While in the bank's employ, he is alleged to have stolen the personal information of dozens of bank employees, mostly from the bank's information technology department.
A spokesperson for the Manhattan District Attorney's Office was not immediately available to confirm how long Adeyemi worked for the bank.
Over the eight year period, Adeyemi is alleged to have used the identities of other bank employees to open brokerage accounts at various institutions, including E*Trade, Fidelity, Citi, Wachovia, and Washington Mutual, and to have used those accounts to store and transfer money stolen from charities and non-profits.
Adeyemi's ability to access the bank accounts of charities and non-profits was made easier than it might otherwise have been because such organizations often make their bank account information available online to facilitate donations, the District Attorney's Office said.
The list of affected organizations includes: Goodwill Industries of Greater New York and Northern New Jersey, Iris Ministries, the Kalgidhar Trust, the Sudanese American Community Development Organization, Ravi Zacharias International Ministries, AFK Foundation, the American Community School at Beirut, the Jacksonville Humane Society, American Friends of Birdlife International, the International Association of Women Judges, the Space Generation Advisory Council, and the American Association for Clinical Chemistry.
Adeyemi allegedly stole $128,000 from the IT employees whose identities he'd stolen. The District Attorney's Office claims that Adeyemi changed his former colleagues' online bank account contact information, hijacked their accounts and wired money out -- in increments below $10,000 to avoid triggering mandatory reporting to the US Treasury -- to the dummy accounts he had established at various brokerages. He allegedly bought about $100,000 in US Postal Service money orders, which he used to pay living expenses and to send money overseas, primarily to Nig.eri.a.
Adeyemi was placed under Secret Service surveillance "when suspicious Internet activity traced back to wireless Internet connections in Adeyemi's apartment building, and mail connected to the fraud was delivered to the various apartments within the building," the District Attorney's Office said.
An April 30, 2009 search of Adeyemi's apartment turned up credit reports belonging to dozens of Bank of New York employees on his computer, along with other documents containing personal information on over 150 bank employees, and $30,000 in cash. A storage locker rented by Adeyemi was found to contain similar documents and credit cards bearing the names of bank employees.
Adeyemi was arrested when the warrant was served and has remained in custody.
In an e-mail, Kurt Johnson, VP of corporate strategy for security vendor Courion, said that if the bank had had the proper automated access management technology in place, Adeyemi probably would not have been able to abuse his position as easily.
"Companies need to wake up to internal threats facing them today and stop handing the keys to the kingdom to people who have no business holding them," Johnson said.
More news from our investigations
The penchant for quick money by most young Nigerians in the diaspora has now taken another dimension, as most of them now use their wealth of academic wherewithal to wreck havoc on the lives of their unsuspecting victims by defrauding
them without recourse to conscience whether they are right in such atrocious act. It is appalling to see that as anti graft agents in Nigeria (EFCC and ICPC) are working to quell corrupt practices and economic crimes right here in Nigeria, some Nigerians in the diaspora are still neck-deep in corruption and mudslinging the image of the Nigeria for self aggrandizement.Adeniyi Adeyemi, 27, of Brooklyn has been summarily made to face 149 counts, including grand larceny and identity theft. A 27-year-old Brooklyn man used his job as a computer technician to appropriate the identities of more than 150 employees at the Bank of New York Mellon and steal more than $1.1 million from a wide array of nonprofit groups and other institutions, officials announced this made this known recently. The technician, Adeniyi (of Yoruba origin), a of Crown Heights, was charged with grand larceny, identity theft, money laundering, scheme to defraud, computer tampering and unlawful possession of personal identification information in a indictment.
9jabook.com checks revealed that the fraud started in November 2001 and lasted through April of this 2009, according to the office of the Manhattan district attorney, Robert M. Morgenthau, which is prosecuting the case. Using his position as a contract employee in the information technology department at Bank of New York Mellon, Mr. Adeyemi stole personal identifying information from dozens of employees, using the information to more than 30 bank and brokerage accounts in their names at E*Trade, Fidelity, Citi, Wachovia and Washington Mutual, Mr. Morgenthau said.
Mr. Adeyemi then diverted money from the bank accounts of charities, transferred the funds to the dummy accounts, and later withdrew the money or funneled it into a second layer of “dummy accounts,” Mr. Morgenthau said. Among the charities Mr. Adeyemi is said to have stolen from are Goodwill Industries, Iris Ministries, the Kalgidhar Trust, the Sudanese American Community Development Organization, Ravi Zacharias International Ministries, the American Community School at Beirut, the Jacksonville Humane Society, American Friends of Birdlife International, the International Association of Women Judges, the Space Generation Advisory Council, and the American Association for Clinical Chemistry.
Mr. Adeyemi is also alleged to have bought more than $100,000 in money orders from the Postal Service using funds stolen from the employees whose information he took. The New York/New Jersey Electronic Crimes Task Force of the United States Secret Service began surveillance on Mr. Adeyemi after tracing suspicious Internet activity to his apartment. During a court-authorized search in April, investigators found dozens of bank employees’ credit reports on his computer, along with many other identifying documents for more than 150 employees, Mr. Morgenthau’s office said.
Mr. Adeyemi was arrested and has been held in custody since then. He was to be arraigned in State Supreme Court before Justice Carol Berkman. Kevin Heine, a spokesman for Bank of New York Mellon, said in a statement, “We strongly support the investigation and actions taken by the district attorney’s office, and are fully cooperating.”
It was however gathered that Adeyemi was only caught when he got greedy and decided to steal from his ID-theft victims directly and investigators realized so many of them worked at Bank of New York, said Chief Assistant DA Mark Dwyer. Investigators are hinting that Adeyemi worked as part of a ring, and may have used some of his stolen fortune to buy his way into a sham marriage that enabled him to stay in the US. A bank spokesman Kevin Heine declined to comment on the case, except to say, "We strongly support the investigation and the actions taken by the DA's office and are fully cooperating."
by Paul Adams 9jabook's 4.1.9 Buster
Coming Soon Expose of Top 20 YahooYahoo "ChairMen" of Naija origin in the diaspora with names and "Pictures" ! email any comments or if you know any Chairman or Yahoo Yahoo boy in your area to pauladams@systemini.net
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