In the latest Fintech news, two fintech executives and the manager of a US-based money transfer company have bagged a combined 8-year sentence in the US federal prison.
The Ping Express executives, CEO Anslem Oshionebo (45) and COO Opeyemi Odeyale (43), were given a 27-month prison sentence, and the company’s business manager, Aleoghena Okhumale, received a 42-month prison sentence. All three were convicted of intentionally transferring the [illegal] proceeds of online dating scams.
In court filings, the firm, Ping Express confessed to breaking money laundering rules after it transferred $167 million out of the US. Within three years, about $160 million was sent to Nigeria, some of which were proceeds from online dating scams. Ping Express also confessed to relaxing its policy when it failed to obtain enough details about the sources of the transferred funds, or the customers initiating the transmissions.
In a statement released by Chad E. Meacham– US Attorney for the Northern District of Texas– the firm admitted its failure to effect its anti-money laundering policy and operated unlicensed in at least 5 US states. The law requires the company to report any financial discrepancies to regulators. However, the company’s court filings state it failed to make a single anti-money laundering report in 3 years of operation.
Regarding the executives, Bloomberg reports that Oshionebo, a former senior manager at PwC, stated in an email that he lacked the resources to continue fighting the case and that “history will be the best judge”. Odeyale also maintains that the case against him had “gross violations”.
The US Department of Justice (DoJ) states that Ping claimed its anti-money laundering policy limited first-time customer transactions to $499, daily transactions to $3,000, and monthly transactions to $4,500. A part of the statement read that the company “allowed more than 1,500 customers to violate these rules. In one instance, Ping allowed a customer to remit more than $80,000 in a single month—17 times more than the purported limit.
According to DoJ statements, Collins Orogun, one of Ping’s top customers and a co-defendant in the case, admitted to receiving a fee for laundering money for “romance scam” fraudsters and other criminals. Over 2 years, the statement read that he (Orogun) received over $1.3 million in cash, cashier’s cheques, and wires into different US bank accounts, and then quickly moved more than $1 million of the funds to Africa via Ping.
The illegal proceeds were acquired in a series of “romance scams”. An incident involved an Indiana woman who wired $15,000 to her heartthrob, Carson Jacks, an oil laborer in the Gulf of Mexico who came down with malaria. Another Indiana woman wired $6,300 to her lover, Thomas Ken, a ship captain.
Orogun, who facilitated the fund transfer through Ping, might be handed a 20-year sentence in federal prison when sentenced on January 23, 2023. Ping Express, on the other hand, might be handed a 5-year probation period and a $500,000 fine.
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