Manhattan District Attorney Rober M. Morgenthau announced Wednesday the 149 count indictment of Adeniyi Adeyemi, a 27 year old computer technician employed by the Bank of New York. The charges stem from a nearly 8 year long scheme to steal the personal information of other Bank of New York employees and use it to funnel more than $1.1 million out of the accounts of several charitable organizations.
For example, in July 2006, ADEYEMI opened a dummy account with E*Trade, an online brokerage, in the name of a Bank of New York employee from the Information Technology Department. Over the course of the ensuing two months, ADEYEMI transferred money online from the bank account of Goodwill Industries of Greater New York and Northern New Jersey into the dummy account. By the time the fraud was uncovered, ADEYEMI had stolen $120,000 from Goodwill Industries. ADEYEMI spent nearly $70,000 of that total on money orders from the United States Postal Service (USPS), and withdrew the remainder in cash or transferred it to other dummy accounts. Other victimized organizations include Iris Ministries, the Kalgidhar Trust, the Sudanese American Community Development Organization, Ravi Zacharias International Ministries, AFK Foundation, the American Community School at Beirut, the Jacksonville Humane Society, American Friends of Birdlife International, the International Association of Women Judges, the Space Generation Advisory Council, and the American Association for Clinical Chemistry.
Adeyemi also stole from the bank employees:
Exploiting his theft of their personal identification information, ADEYEMI changed the contact information associated with the employees’ online banking profiles, took control of their online banking capabilities, and wired money from the employees’ personal bank accounts to dummy accounts he had established. To avoid scrutiny, ADEYEMI structured all such wire transfers to be just under $10,000, the threshold at which all financial institutions must report transactions to the United States Treasury. ADEYEMI stole more than $128,000 by compromising Bank of New York employees’ online banking profiles in this manner. Among other purchases, ADEYEMI used these stolen proceeds to buy additional USPS money orders. All told, ADEYEMI purchased more than $100,000 in USPS money orders using stolen funds. ADEYEMI redeemed these money orders, among other things, to pay personal expenses such as rent on his apartment and his credit card bills. ADEYEMI also redeemed USPS money orders to ship substantial volumes of goods overseas, primarily to Nigeria.
The charges brought against Adeyemi include grand larceny, identity theft, money laundering, scheme to defaud, computer tampering and unlawful possession of personal identification information.
