Manchester youngster Olajide Onikoyi jailed for three years for Internet fraud

NIGERIAN Olajide Onikoyi has been sent to jail for three years at Southwark Crown Court after being found guilty of hacking into the accounts of 238 persons and defrauding them to the tune of £393,000.

Part of a fraudulent cyber gang of criminals, Mr Onikoyi 29, was found guilty defrauding his victims by sending scam emails to students and tricking them into divulging personal account details. He then hacked into their accounts and took out money before he was finally arrested by the Cyber Crime Unit of London's Metropolitan Police.

During trial, the court heard that Onikoyi broke into the bank accounts of hundreds of UK students after tricking them with bogus emails inviting them to update details on their student loan account via a link to a bogus website. When the site was accessed by the unsuspecting victims, Mr Onikoyi was able to gain unauthorized access to their bank accounts and extract large amounts of money.

One of his victims had £19,000 taken from their account. When police seized Mr Onikoyi's computer after his arrest, they found chat logs from cyber-crime forums that revealed he was conspiring with criminals in Russia, Lithuania and the UK.

A number of other people have also been jailed over the scam, which police say involved a total of £1.5m stolen from unauthorised access to accounts. Mr Onikoyi pleaded guilty and was sentenced to three years in prison for conspiracy to defraud and nine months for money laundering, with both sentences running concurrently.

Detective Chief Inspector Jason Tunn of the Metropolitan 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.”

Mr Onikoyi of Blackley in Manchester, was finally apprehended after the affected financial institutions tipped off the police. As part of their inquiries, detectives worked closely with the banking industry, internet service providers and the Student Loans Company, which said it regularly put out warnings about such scams.