Femi Ashekun/
Anslem Oshionebo and Opeyemi Odeyale, Founders of Ping Express US LLC, have been sentenced to 27 months in jail over a $160 million alleged proceed of fraud that was sent to Nigeria through the company.
The Texas-based fintech firm sends customers’ remittances to Nigeria, Kenya, and other African nations.
Anslem Oshionebo, 45, and Opeyemi Odeyale, 43, were sentenced after being found guilty of failing to maintain effective anti-money laundering controls and unlicensed money-transmitting, Bloomberg reports.
According to US legal filings, the money was sent over a period of about three years.
In a three-year period highlighted by the Department of Justice, the firm failed to flag a single suspicious transaction to regulators despite processing a “significant amount” of them, though it filed a batch of reports later.
One customer used the firm to move funds they made from fake-romance scams, with victims including a woman in Indiana who sent $15,000 to a supposed roughneck oil worker in the Gulf of Mexico, and another who sent $6,300 to a purported Irish sea captain.
Another customer moved more than $80,000 in a single month, far more than the company’s $4,500 limit, court filings show.
Ping Express faces five years of probation and a fine as high as $500,000 after pleading guilty to a similar charge, while another executive received a 42-month sentence, the Department of Justice said.
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