Two Ghanaian-American citizens are in police custody in the United States over offences including wire fraud that fetched them about US$7 million over three years.
The main suspect, Kelvin Nkwantabisa is in the custody of U.S. Marshals in Broward County, a local news outlet Local 10 reported on Friday, May 24.
The other suspect, Justice Amoh, also known as “Samuel Andrews,” of The Bronx, New York; is “being prosecuted in the Southern District of Florida.”
The names of their two other co-conspirators were given as John Jouissance, of Canal Winchester, Ohio; and Leshea Moore, also known as “Deborah Green,” of Acworth, Georgia.
Mynewsgh.com reports that Amoh and Nkwantabisa, both schooled in Ghana and left the country after their secondary education to settle in the US where the alleged crimes took place.
The federal indictment also mentions unnamed co-conspirators.
Modus operandi:
It states that co-conspirators compromised victims’ business email accounts “for the purpose of monitoring and intercepting emails, specifically those discussing wire transfer payments.”
Pretending to be legitimate business partners, the co-conspirators sent emails “containing false and fraudulent requests for payment and wire instructions to victims” that induced the victims to transfer money into bank accounts the group controlled, prosecutors allege.
Five victims of the scheme:
The indictment lists five victims of the scheme — all unidentified — ranging from a corporation in Coral Springs, to a company in Suffolk, England and an investor in Auckland, New Zealand.
Those entities wired more than $7 million to bank accounts controlled by the quartet and other co-conspirators.
The group facing charges, as well as their co-conspirators, opened “shell companies and bank accounts in the names of those shell companies for the purpose of receiving stolen victim funds,” prosecutors allege.
Authorities said the con went on from as early as August 2022 and continued through this March.
The Coral Springs company alone lost more than $1.3 million to the scheme, according to the indictment.
Main suspect appears in court:
Nkwantabisa appeared in Fort Lauderdale federal court on Thursday, according to court records. He’s scheduled for an arraignment and detention hearing in front of a magistrate judge next Thursday.
According to federal court records, Amoh and Jouissance were also taken into custody in New York and Ohio, respectively, this week. Moore was not in custody as of Friday, authorities said.
All face decades in federal prison if convicted.