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Ayanniyi Alayande, 47, of Darby, PA wasn't involved in the crudely constructed "Nigerian prince" emails schemes of the past. He ran with a ring that altered and cashed business checks stolen from the mail, authorities said.
Alayande is the first of 12 defendants in the case to take a deal from the government and plead guilty rather than face trial.
Members of the highly organized group altered the payee on the checks to a bogus name and deposited them into bank accounts that had been opened with forged foreign passport documents and phony U.S. visas, U.S. Attorney Philip R. Sellinger said.
Once the banks credited all or a portion of the funds to the accounts – but before the checks had cleared – the conspirators used debits cards to withdraw the money through ATMs or by buying money orders, Sellinger said.
All told, the crew created more than 400 bogus accounts that drained the victim banks of nearly $6 million from June 2016 to March 2020, the U.S. attorney said.
A dozen defendants were charged following arrests by the FBI. Ayanniyi Alayande pleaded guilty on Friday to conspiracy to commit bank fraud via video-conference with a federal judge in Camden.
As part of his plea, Alayande agreed to forfeit his interest in $90,000 worth of money orders that were seized from a public storage facility in Philadelphia, Sellinger said.
U.S. District Judge Noel L. Hillman scheduled sentencing for May 12.
Charges against 11 others are still pending.
Sellinger credited special agents of the U.S. Postal Inspection Service's Bellmawr, Philadelphia and Washington, D.C. offices, Homeland Security Investigations offices in Cherry Hill, Newark, Philadelphia, Baltimore and Boston and the U.S. Department of State’s Diplomatic Security Service in Philadelphia with the investigation leading to the plea, secured by Assistant U.S. Attorney Patrick C. Askin of his Criminal Division in Camden.
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