A United States court has ordered Nigerian national Chukwuemeka Victor Amachukwu to forfeit $10.8 million following his conviction in a case involving computer intrusions, identity theft and multiple financial fraud schemes.
According to The Sun, the forfeiture order accompanied an eight-year prison sentence imposed on the 40-year-old by US District Judge Paul G. Gardephe in the Southern District of New York on Monday. He was also directed to pay $3.64 million in restitution and serve one year of supervised release.
One of the schemes involved false investment offers through which Amachukwu and his associates collected more than $7 million. Court records showed that he presented himself as a wealthy foreign financier and promoted investments in standby letters of credit that did not exist.
The case also exposed a separate operation targeting American tax preparation companies. Beginning in at least 2019, Amachukwu, Kingsley Uchelue Utulu and other associates allegedly used deceptive emails to penetrate the firms’ computer systems and obtain confidential customer records. At least 800 customers had their tax and identifying information stolen.
The compromised data was used to seek at least $8.4 million in fraudulent tax refunds, with at least $2.5 million successfully collected. The conspirators also obtained at least $819,000 through fraudulent applications to the US Small Business Administration’s Economic Injury Disaster Loan programme.
Amachukwu, who also used the names Chukwuemeka Victor Eletuo and So Kwan Leung, had pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit computer intrusions and conspiracy to commit wire fraud. The prosecution was handled by the Complex Frauds and Cybercrime Unit of the US Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York.
