Published 29th Nov, 2023

By Sodeeq Atanda

Dayo Mustapha, a Nigerian national with legal resident status in the United Kingdom, has confessed to stealing $6 million dollars from brokerage accounts in the United States of America.

His guilt plea was taken at a court in Brooklyn, New York, on Tuesday.

He admitted his involvement in committing computer intrusion, securities fraud, wire fraud and access device fraud as a member of a ring of hackers and fraudsters who specialised in hacking email and brokerage accounts of people in and outside of the country.

The crime took place between 2011 and 2018. He and his co-conspirators hacked into servers of financial institutions and stole users’ data and also controlled those accounts in trading without the holders’ consent.

“First, they accessed victims’ email accounts and, impersonating the victims, caused wire transfers of the victims’ funds for their own benefit,” a Department of Justice’s statement partly read.

“Second, they used their access to the victims’ securities brokerage accounts to steal securities outright by having them transferred out of the accounts.

“Third, Mustapha and his co-conspirators caused the victims’ brokerage accounts to execute unfavorable trades against accounts that Mustapha and his co-conspirators controlled, generating a profit for themselves at the victims’ expense. Losses attributable to the scheme were in excess of $6 million.”

Mustapha has not been sentenced yet. But his offences could land him up to a 20-year jail sentence as provided by the law.

The US Securities and Exchange Commission had obtained a court injunction in 2016 to freeze over $100,000 in assets linked to Mustapha in brokerage and bank accounts.

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