By Christian George
One Kolawole Erinle was said to have been involved in a cybercrime, allegedly defrauding Kansas City University of Medicine and Biosciences in the United States to the tune of $1.4m.
A Federal Bureau of Investigation’s agent, Mr Ayotunde Solademi told an Ikeja Special Offences Court.
Erinle, together with his firm, Rinde-Remdex Nigeria Limited was standing a three-count charge including conspiracy, retention of proceeds of criminal conduct, and obtaining money under false pretence.
According to Punch, Solademi, the first prosecution witness, led in examination in chief by the EFCC counsel, Temitope Banjo, told the court that KCUMB underwent a major construction project with a construction company called J.E.Dunn in Kansas City sometime in 2019 and the university made a wired transfer of approximately $1.41m to an account that it believed belonged to J. E. Dunn.
Surprisingly, J.E. Dunn wrote, requesting for the payment of the pending invoice.
Only on a careful examination was it discovered that in the course of their communication, the domain name was changed.
“It was later found out by both parties that somebody changed the wire transfer details for Dunn using a fake email domain jedunn.org whereas the real domain name for the construction company is jedunn.com.
“After this, the case was reported to the FBI and an investigation carried out showed that the email account of Dunn’s Chief Financial Officer was spoofed,” he added.
The wired transfer was said to have impacted on an account with Bank of America and same day $850,000 was wired to then Diamond Bank.
The witness told Justice Ramon Oshodi that the investigation showed that the Bank of America account had an account named Edada Autoparts and Machinary Spareparts Inc. with an address in Texas, adding that the transfer to Nigerian bank linked to Rinde-Remdex Nigeria Limited.
However, the defendant pleaded not guilty to the charge.
