CLEVELAND – A Georgia man has been sentenced to prison for participating in a scheme to defraud victim entities by illegally accessing their email accounts to identify their true vendors and then posing as those vendors in emails requesting payments.Chinedu Opute, 43, of LaGrange, Georgia was sentenced to 72 months in prison by U.S. District Judge Bridget Meehan Brennan after pleading guilty in January to Conspiracy to Commit Wire Fraud, Conspiracy to Commit Money Laundering, and Aggravated Identity Theft. He was also ordered to serve three years of supervised release after imprisonment, pay a $15,000 fine, and pay over $1.4 million in restitution.According to court documents and evidence presented in court, in 2023, Opute and his co-conspirators engaged in a widespread campaign to compromise business email accounts and steal victim funds. They gained unauthorized access to victims’ email accounts and then posed as legitimate third-party creditors or vendors to whom the victim business owed money.
The conspirators then sent a fraudulent email with payment instructions directing the victims to send funds to bank accounts that the conspirators, in fact, controlled. Opute was responsible for setting up the bank accounts that were used to receive, and subsequently disburse, the stolen funds. Specifically, in early 2023, Opute established a fake company, Overseas Dry Food Supplier LLC (ODFS), as well as a fake identity, Angel Adames, that he used to open a bank account in the name of ODFS. In June 2023, the ODFS bank account received more than $1 million in stolen funds from three victims, including a local government entity in the Northern District of Ohio.
Opute immediately disbursed the stolen funds by loading them onto prepaid credit cards in the names of real people that were disguised to look like payments to gig employees. Opute then withdrew those funds from the prepaid cards at ATMs in the Atlanta area. Opute kept approximately 30-40% of the stolen funds and used the money to fund his lavish lifestyle. He used the funds to make a $200,000 down payment on an Atlanta-area condo and to buy a $100,000 Range Rover and luxury jewelry.
In total, eight victims lost a combined $1.7 million because of Opute’s scheme. Investigators also discovered that he, and his coconspirators, had targeted other victims in attempts to obtain another $5.1 million through fraud. This investigation was led by the FBI Cleveland Division.Assistant United States Attorney Megan R. Miller for the Northern District of Ohio led the prosecution.