The U.S. authorities have commenced the prosecution of Lagos-based Yahoo boy, Olamide Shanu, who was extradited from the UK over his involvement in sextortion and wire fraud, through which he “obtained at least $2 million.”
The U.S. Department of Justice, in a statement on Thursday, said Mr “Shanu, 34, of Lagos, Nigeria, made his initial appearance yesterday after his extradition to the United States from the United Kingdom.”
Mr Shanu, who made his initial appearance before U.S. Magistrate Judge Debora K. Grasham, the DoJ said, “is charged in an eight-count indictment with wire fraud conspiracy, aggravated identity theft, conspiracy to commit interstate communications with intent to extort, and cyberstalking.”
He was also charged with “conspiracy to commit extortion, money laundering conspiracy, extortion, interstate communications with intent to commit extortion, and cyberstalking.”
Mr Shanu and his “conspirators engaged in this extortion of numerous victims across the United States, including a college student in Idaho,” the DoJ said. “If convicted of the charges, Shanu faces up to 20 years in federal prison. He also faces restitution for the losses incurred by the victims of the scheme.”
According to Mr Shanu’s indictment, he and his conspirators disguised themselves as females on social media and persuaded their victims, typically males, to send sexual images of themselves. Once the victims sent the explicit images, he threatened to send them to the victims’ friends and families unless the victims paid money.
Mr Shanu allegedly obtained at least $2,000,000 fraudulently from his victims, laundering it through peer-to-peer payment applications and several cryptocurrency wallet addresses before transferring it to the scheme’s perpetrators in Nigeria.
Citing court filings in 2023, Peoples Gazette had reported that the United States Secret Service took over Mr Shanu’s Binance account after tracing a $2.5 million wire fraud, money laundering, and sextortion scheme to his account.
