U.S. authorities announced the arrest of a Nigerian citizen accused of hacking and identity theft with the intention of committing fraud for nearly $1 million USD in office products, deceiving employees of some government offices.
Olumide Ogunremi, 43, pleaded guilty to the charges, becoming charged with a 36-month prison sentence.
Court documents mention that, between July and December 2013, Ogunremi and his accomplices deployed a hacking and phishing campaign on the systems of various U.S. government agencies, including the Environmental Protection Agency. Inadvertently, the attackers managed to access the victims’ login credentials.
The attackers reportedly used the compromised credentials to access the email accounts of affected employees to place fraudulent orders for office products, including printer ink cartridges. The main ones affected are employees authorized to make deals with suppliers.
Ordered products were shipped to various locations in New Jersey and other locations to eventually be shipped abroad. Once in Ogunremi’s hands, the goods were illegally resold.
Although Ogunremi had agreed to plead guilty to conspiracy to commit fraud in March 2018, the defendant decided to flee to Canada, where he was apprehended again, being extradited and sentenced to three years in prison in 2019; In addition, Ogunremi must serve two years of probation under supervision and cover a restitution of nearly $70,000 USD.
He is a cyber security and malware researcher. He studied Computer Science and started working as a cyber security analyst in 2006. He is actively working as an cyber security investigator. He also worked for different security companies. His everyday job includes researching about new cyber security incidents. Also he has deep level of knowledge in enterprise security implementation.