Nigerian scammer may be charged in local fraud case
U.S. Attorney James McDevitt has asked the Secret Service and the FBI to pursue charges against a federal felon who is suspected of running a get-rich-quick scam that duped a Republic, Wash., businesswoman into stealing more than $670,000.
The suspect, identified in court documents obtained by The Spokesman-Review, is Nigerian citizen Terry O. Ayeni, who is to be deported when he completes a four-year prison term.
Ayeni had been living in the United States when he was convicted two years ago in a scam similar to the one that turned Republic resident Donna Burbank, 50, into a criminal as well as a victim. Burbank was sentenced in June 2004 to three years in prison after pleading guilty to two counts of misapplication of bank or credit union money.
Burbank, owner of Ferry County Title and Escrow Co. in Republic, stole money she was handling in trust for customers and their banks. The brunt of the losses was borne by a real estate title insurance company for which Burbank was an agent, but many individuals also suffered punishing losses.
For example, a 63-year-old disabled woman was left destitute when she sold a home and Burbank stole the proceeds. The woman, who was caring for her 85-year-old mother with Alzheimer’s disease, also faced the prospect of foreclosing on the young couple that was buying the house. The couple, with four children, had borrowed the $20,000 Burbank took.
When U.S. District Judge Justin Quackenbush sentenced Burbank, he asked what was being done to catch the people who conned her. Authorities had little information at the time.
Local FBI officials said outside court that they thought the Secret Service was investigating the case, but the chances of catching anyone in a so-called Nigerian Letter scam were slim because perpetrators often live in other countries.
In fact, though, the Secret Service had already caught Ayeni, in a nearly identical scam in New York. He pleaded guilty and was sent to prison for a maximum-standard 46 months in April 2003.
Court documents show Ayeni and unnamed co-conspirators in the New York case employed the same cast of fictitious characters that was used to bilk Burbank.
“It looks like there might be something there,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Tom Rice said in response to Spokesman-Review inquiries about Ayeni’s possible connection to Burbank.
Rice, who is in charge of criminal prosecutions in the Spokane office, said authorities will have to move quickly because a five-year statute of limitations in the scam against Burbank will run out in approximately six months.
Burbank got her “Nigerian” letter by fax in January 2001, from a “Dr. Udo Udoma.” The fictitious Udoma claimed he worked for the Nigerian government and wanted to transfer $21.5 million into Burbank’s bank account.
The con game began in Nigeria, and many practitioners still operate there, according to an FBI spokesman. The basic idea is an offer to reward foreigners lavishly for help in smuggling millions of dollars out of Nigeria or some other country that supposedly wants to seize the fortune.
Before the foreign helpers can get their promised share of the treasure, the targeted victims are told, they must put up substantial amounts of their own money for bank fees, government permits and other costs. The owner of the Nigerian fortune wouldn’t need help, after all, if his own money were available.
“Anybody that falls for a Nigerian Letter scam deserves a whack with a stupid stick,” FBI spokesman Ray Lauer said when Burbank was caught. “That scam is as old as fax machines.”
“It’s amazing how many people are still falling for this,” Lauer said. “Every time you see one of these things, it’s like those cartoons you see on Saturday where the guy’s eyeballs bulge out with dollar signs.”
Burbank heard the ka-ching of cash registers. According to her plea agreement, she sent Udoma a reply and was contacted by a “Lemmy Stephens” of Newark, N.J., who claimed to be associated with Global Security of New York. A $20,000 payment from Burbank’s savings got her and her husband, Arnold “Smokey” Burbank, an invitation to Newark, N.J., in February or March 2001.
Stephens took them to a storage locker and showed them four packages of black paper, according to court documents. Then the couple met an “Oneil Hall” from Queens, N.Y., who took the Burbanks to a hotel room and converted five of the black papers into $100 bills by washing them in what was supposedly a special chemical.
Disguising the money was the only way to get it out of Nigeria, and the chemical was the only way to get rid of the black coating, Hall explained. Another of Dr. Udoma’s representatives, “Amed Balu,” told the Burbanks he would need $125,000 a bottle for more of the chemical, but each bottle would wash $10 million.
Over the next several months, by cashing in Arnold Burbank’s retirement fund, selling some real estate, and logging some of their land, the Burbanks sent about $106,000 to the three men they’d met.
Still more money was needed for various government and banking problems, such as $115,000 to certify that the money didn’t come from illegal drugs and $227,500 to prove that terrorists weren’t involved. Burbank began stealing from her customers and their banks to cover those costs.
Things went differently in October 2002 when Lemmy Stephens and Oneil Hall approached other people about helping “Rabiu Useni” smuggle $60 million that one of Useni’s relatives, a Nigerian general, supposedly had amassed in arms deals before being arrested.
A woman in New Hampshire wired $17,600 to Hall under instructions from Lemmy Stephens, who claimed to be representing Useni as a diplomat from Ivory Coast, according to federal court documents in New York. Then the woman got cold feet about sending the rest of the $50,000 Stephens said was needed.
She contacted the Secret Service, and Special Agent William Guida set up a sting operation. In December 2002, Guida had the woman call Stephens and offer to give him cash in person to avoid wire-transfer fees. Stephens agreed to a meeting at the Stage Door Deli near 33rd Street and Eighth Avenue in Manhattan.
Guida and other law enforcement officers staked out the restaurant while the woman, wired for sound, kept her rendezvous with Stephens. As soon as the woman got a receipt for $30,000 in marked counterfeit money, Guida moved in and arrested Stephens, who turned out to be Terry Ayeni.
Ayeni pleaded guilty in April 2003 to conspiracy to commit wire fraud and was sentenced three months later. About a year after that, Burbank went to prison.
According to the grand jury that indicted Ayeni, he and unnamed co-conspirators conned two people in addition to the woman who helped the Secret Service catch Ayeni.
The grand jury said one of the additional victims sent a total of $20,750 from Indiana to New York in six wire transfers, in October and December 2002, to recipients identified as James W. Repass, Oneil Hall, Awn Taylor, Debra Jackson, Lemmy Stephens and Robert Stephens.
In December 2002, the third victim sent $6,000 to Oneil Hall from Connecticut, according to Ayeni’s indictment.
The $44,350 losses in those cases paled beside the nearly $800,000 Burbank and her victims lost.
Secret Service officials declined to discuss the cases, and Ayeni’s court documents don’t say whether any of his accomplices were identified or charged. Nor do court documents say anything about efforts to recover the fraudulently obtained money.
A transcript of Ayeni’s guilty plea shows he claimed to have been recruited to the scheme by a man who bought a car from him. Ayeni said the man, who travels between Nigeria and the United States, gave him a telephone and arranged for someone else to explain how Ayeni could “make some extra money.”
The car buyer told him to call himself Lemmy Stephens, Ayeni told U.S. District Judge Denise L. Cote.
The transcript gives no indication that Ayeni identified or was asked to identify the supposed mastermind.
Documents from Ayeni’s New York conviction give no indication that any of the victims saw any suspect other than Ayeni. But Burbank’s conviction documents say she and her husband met three suspects.