Nigerian ‘tech queen’ Sapphire Egemasi is facing more than 20 years’ imprisonment in prison after the FBI arrested her for defrauding several U.S. government agencies of millions of dollars.
Ms Egemasi, a programmer who operates a Devpost account, was arrested in Bronx, New York, alongside other co-conspirators, including Samuel Kwadwo Osei, who appeared to have led the syndicate.
The arrest of the suspected fraudsters followed a federal grand jury indictment on internet fraud and money laundering charges against them last year for the offences officials alleged to have occurred between September 2021 and February 2023.
According to court documents, the Nigerian national and her co-defendants, who are Ghanaians, conspired to defraud the city of Kentucky millions of dollars, with Ms Egemasi’s role being to register and design spoof websites of U.S. government institutions to steal login credentials.
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Officials noted that Ms Egemasi had lived in Cambridge, United Kingdom, until her arrest.
It is believed that she met her Ghanaian co-conspirators when she was living in the West African nation years ago and subsequently became the tech expert for the fraud syndicate that operated both in the United States and Nigeria.
She was also responsible for helping the gang redirect stolen funds to accounts controlled by the fraudsters through wire transfers.
Retrieved text messages confirmed that the group had once rerouted $965,000 in stolen funds from the city of Kentucky to a PNC Bank account in August 2022.
During the same period, the gang also diverted $330,000, another chunk of money stolen from the city, into an account at Bank of America.
To conceal the true source of her wealth, the defendant claimed to have held several positions, primarily internships, at multinational companies such as British Petroleum, H&M, and Zara.
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