A man has been jailed for his part in a £1.5m phishing scam which tricked students into handing over their passwords online.
29 year old Olajide Onikoyi, from Manchester sent fake emails to potential victims inviting them to click on a link to update their student-loan details.
But the website was fake and Onikoyi used the personal details he collected to access their bank accounts and withdraw large amounts of money.
Onikoyi pleaded guilty at Southwark Crown Court and was sentenced to three years in prison for conspiracy to defraud and nine months for money laundering, to run consecutively.
Conspiring with fraudsters overseas
Onikoyi laundered £393,000 from 238 victims in total and one victim had £19,000 stolen from their bank account.
When police seized Onikoyi’s computer they recovered chat logs from cyber crime forums. These revealed Onikoyi was conspiring with others from Russia, Lithuania and the UK in order to compromise computers and associated bank accounts.
Detective Chief Inspector Jason Tunn of the Met Police's Cyber Crime Unit said: "My officers worked doggedly to secure Onikoyi's conviction. They examined numerous leads to identify members of this phishing gang, of which Onikoyi was a key member.
"He played a significant role in the scam by systematically targeting British students and UK financial institutions in order to steal large amounts of money that were then dispersed across numerous bank accounts."
For more information visit the Met Police website.
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To report a fraud and receive a police crime reference number, call Action Fraud on 0300 123 2040 or use our online fraud reporting tool.
Related links
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