The United States Secret Service has taken over the Binance account of 32-year-old male of Nigerian descent, Olamide Shanu, after tracing his account to a $2.5 million wire fra¥d, money laundering and sextortion scheme, Peoples Gazette is reporting.
The allegations mounted against Mr Shanu and the manner the fra¥d scheme was perpetrated mirrored the operation of internet fra¥dsters in Nigeria known as Yahoo boys.
Scouting social media platforms such as Instagram and Snapchat for male teenagers and unsuspecting adults to defra¥d, Mr Shanu posed as a female to obtain the explicit images and videos of his victims after forming a deceptive intimate relationship with them.
He then thr£at£ned to send the n+des to their friends should they refuse to send the requested sum and more s+xual videos. “Hello Fams this is [(CC-3)] n+ked pictures and d**k he’s [(CC-3’s Username)] on Instagram,” the indictment sheet against Mr Shanu filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Idaho and stamped by clerk Stephen Kenyon on November 14 read.
“We, he tried to h¥rt me so I’m spreading his n+d£s rn to make him feel ashamed. All I want you guys to share this (sic) pictures all over the world till it goes viral and get to all his friends and family, that’s all,” reads a screenshot Shanu sent to s+xtort a victim on April 3 while attaching the victim’s name, age and address.
The Binance account received over 84.66478598 BTC approximately $2.6 million and $2.5 million withdrawn in Bitcoin over a period of three years, investigations showed. Current balance stood at 0 BTC as of the time investigators seized the account.
The victim, identified as V1 to protect his identity as a minor, said that sometime in May, he accepted a friend request from @chloe.walterz on Snapchat. He developed an intimate friendship with his new acquaintance, whom he assumed to be a white female in her 20s, and they started exchanging n¥de photos and videos, which set in motion the s+xtortion scheme. However, the relationship soon soured after @chloe.walterz thrEat£ned him to pay $300 or risk his n¥des getting sent to his friends on social media. He said that he quickly complied.
Another $200 and $500 were sent totalling the payments to $1000. According to the victim, he explained his dilemma to his mother who promptly notified the authorities. The teenager subsequently blocked an insatiable @chloe.walters whose demands for money had grown. Shortly after he blocked the sc+mmer, he accepted another friend request from one Camille smith96 on the same platform. Camille, his new friend, sent him a draft message of his n¥des- which he previously shared with only Chloe -poised to be distributed to his friends on Snapchat, save the send button. Still V1 called the sc+mmers bluff by immediately blocking the new user without succumbing to their demands.
By using warrants to obtain the Snapchat logs of both accounts, investigators were able to link their IP addresses to the same location in Lagos, Nigeria, indicating that Shanu, whose digital footprints were found to have orchestrated the sc+m, was in fact the one controlling both accounts.
Further investigations revealed that the two accounts were h+cked in February from their original owners who were minors as well to commit fra¥d, and that the original usernames and phone
numbers were changed to Nigerian numbers. Victim 2 or V2 was another underage victim forcEd to be a conduit for fraudulent transactions. He received payment from other victims into his Venmo account and forwarded them into a crypto wallet traced to Shanu after authorities presented a warrant to Binance to obtain his wallet information.
V2 on the other hand accepted a friend request on Instagram from a Camillesmith on April 3 and thereafter switched to Snapchat where he frequently chatted with Chloe and also exchanged s+xual explicit images and videos. He was, however, quick to notice the discrepancy in the names particularly because he was receiving Apple iMessages from chloewalterz@icloud.com. As soon as he asked his new friend to clarify her identity, he began to receive thrEats of s+xtortion.
