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Cybercrim told to cough up £1m or spend years in chokey

Confiscation hearing says he has six months to pay up

A cybercriminal from Thamesmead has been given six months to turn up £1m, or he'll be spending another four years behind bars.

Rilwan Adesegun Oshodi – a 31-year-old Nigerian national, formerly of Greenhaven Drive, Thamesmead, SE28 – is currently enjoying Her Majesty's hospitality for conspiracy to defraud and conspiracy to launder the proceeds of crime.

Found guilty last April, Oshodi is serving an eight-year prison sentence for his part in a phishing attack which netted a gang of eight cybercrims almost £1m of a woman's life savings. According to the Met Police, the gang blew the stolen savings on items from "cheeseburgers to high-end computers and gold". As George Best might say, the rest they just frittered away.

After one criminal successfully snagged the victim's bank details with a phishing attack, Oshodi purchased them for £3,200 and had a female associate call the bank and pose as the victim. She changed the contact details associated with the account so that the victim would no longer receive confirmation of transactions.

"The victim's savings were then siphoned off via online transfers to numerous accounts," said a Met Police spokesman, "including several controlled by other individuals. Much of the money was spent when the group embarked on a three-day spending spree during the New Year sales in January 2012."

Detectives arrested the gang's members in March, April and September 2012. These arrests were carried out by the Met's new cybercrime and fraud team, the excellently-branded FALCON.

FALCON took part in a series of co-ordinated raids, assisted by colleagues from East Midlands, York, Humberside, the Met's Fraud Squad and the City of London Police's Specialist Crime Department.

They seized computers from Oshodi's address in Thamesmead which held the details of over 11,000 credit cards, worth an estimated £2.5m loss to the banking industry.

A confiscation hearing on Tuesday ordered Oshodi to pay £940,820 within six months or face up to four extra years in prison.

FALCON's investigating officer, Detective Sergeant Iggy Azad, said: "If Oshodi doesn't pay the money within six months, he faces up to four extra years in prison. That confiscation order will remain in place until he has paid it."

"Oshodi's sentence has taken him off the streets and this confiscation order aims to literally make him pay for what he has done," continued DS Azad. "The money will go back into policing and the criminal justice system, helping us continue to put people like Oshodi before the courts." ®

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