Posted by Chinenye on Tue 20th Oct, 2026 - tori.ng
A Nigerian man has been handed a lengthy prison sentence in the United States after a major fraud case exposed shocking details about how victims were targeted.
(U.S. court Jails Man. photo by The Appeal)
A 40 year old Nigerian, Chukwuemeka Amachukwu, has been sentenced to eight years in prison in the United States.
He is also known as Chukwuemeka Victor Eletuo and So Kwan Leung.
He pleaded guilty to hacking and fraud.
According to the court, he and his partners began hacking U.S. tax businesses in 2019.
They sent fake emails to break into their systems and stole the personal information of about 800 customers.
They used those identities to file fake tax returns and asked for at least 8.4 million dollars in refunds.
They got at least 2.5 million dollars.
They also used the same stolen identities to apply for disaster loans from the Small Business Administration and collected at least 819,000 dollars.
In a separate scam, he posed as a wealthy foreign financier and sold fake investments to U.S. victims.
He made more than 7 million dollars from that scheme.
On top of the prison term, he will serve one year of supervised release.
He must also pay back about 3.6 million dollars and hand over more than 10.8 million dollars.