SPOKANE – A federal grand jury has indicted a Nigerian man already serving a prison sentence for fraud for bilking a Ferry County businesswoman of $670,000 in a get-rich-quick scheme known as the “Nigerian Letter.”
The businesswoman, in turn, is serving a prison sentence for stealing money from clients to give to the scam operators.
Terry O. Ayeni, 42, a Nigerian citizen serving a federal prison sentence in Ohio, was charged Wednesday with 10 counts of wire fraud and one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud.
Ayeni, who was to have been deported to his native country when his sentence ends in April, will be brought to Spokane later this month for a preliminary appearance on the charges, said Tom Rice, chief assistant U.S. attorney in Spokane.
The Nigerian Letter scam has been around for years. Targets are offered a chance to share in fabulous riches if they help a foreigner smuggle money out of another country, typically Nigeria. Intended victims typically receive an e-mail or fax asking them to put up large amounts of money.
Ayeni is accused of duping Donna Jean Burbank, the former owner of Ferry County Title and Escrow Co. in Republic. She is serving a three-year sentence in the Victorville, Calif., federal prison after pleading guilty to two counts of misapplication of bank or credit union money.
After Burbank, 50, exhausted her own funds, she turned over an estimated $670,000 she was handling in trust for customers and their banks to two men she knew as Lemmy Stephens and Oneil Hall.
Lemmy Stephens is an alias used by Ayeni in past scams, according to court documents.
This week’s indictment says Ayeni offered to send $21.5 million to Burbank if she would help him smuggle a fortune out of Nigeria.
The indictment lists 10 transactions between February 2001 and July 2002 in which Burbank wired a total of $227,230 to accounts in New York and England. Some of the money was forwarded to accounts in Switzerland, Belgium and Lebanon.
None of the money Burbank wired overseas has been recovered, Rice said.
Court documents obtained by The Spokesman-Review newspaper show that in the 2003 case, in New York, Ayeni used the “Lemmy Stephens” alias and the same methods as the person who conned Burbank.
Ayeni pleaded guilty in April 2003 to conspiracy to commit wire fraud, in a case in which three people were cheated out of $44,350. He was sentenced to 46 months.
According to court documents, Burbank and her husband, Arnold “Smokey” Burbank, went to Newark, N.J., in early 2001 for a demonstration that persuaded her to keep sending money.
Arnold Burbank wasn’t charged.
No one else has been charged because none of the accomplices has been identified, Rice said.
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