FBI, IRS Charged me With Multimillion-dollar Fraud Because I’m Nigerian: Adesuwa Ogiozee

Nigerian Instagram influencer and indicted Internet fraudster Adesuwa Ogiozee has said she was targeted by American authorities because of her identity as a black woman from Nigeria.

“It’s because I’m a Nigerian that’s why it makes even more sense for them to even come for me,” Ms Ogiozee said in an Instagram live tirade shortly after it was reported that she had been charged in the United States for her role in a romance scam and falsified tax claims.

Specifically, Ms Ogiozee emphasised her trouble came from a customer she sold a car to in a transaction worth only $12,000 in 2016. However, the FBI said it took a protracted investigation for agents to uncover Ms Ogiozee as a mastermind of the fraud and said her role was “extensive.”

“Federal agents have accumulated evidence, however, that proves the defendant’s involvement in fraud and other criminal activity is much more extensive,” the FBI criminal complaint said.

Even though she was indicted by a federal grand jury, she claimed in her Instagram live to over 300,000 followers that American authorities at the FBI were incompetent like Nigerian counterparts at the anti-graft EFCC, saying they failed to see that she only sold car to a suspect whose source of income was not her duty to establish before doing business.

She said the suspect made “bad payment” to her account and the FBI and IRS authorities profiled her on the basis of her Nigerian identity because she was not the only person that did business with the person that purportedly made the so-called bad payment into her account.

“I am sure I am not the only one this person bought something from six years ago,” Ms Ogiozee said on the Instagram broadcast, adding that all car dealers in Nigeria would be in jail if the same standards were to be applied to them.

Verified affidavits submitted to the grand jury that found Ms Ogiozee guilty of fraud said she connived with four others to dupe a woman in Albuquerque, New Mexico, to the tune of $560,000. She was also found to have made suspicious transfers of $3 million and filed fraudulent tax sheets to the Internal Revenue Service.

Prosecutors said Ms Ogiozee faces 20 years in jail if convicted on both charges of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and wire fraud. She was arrested in September 2021 and was granted a secure bail of $25,000.

Mr Ogiozee’s trial has been set for February 6, 2023, while discovery in the case would begin next month. In June, her lawyers filed an appeal before Judge Martha Vazquez, seeking to relax the stringent conditions imposed on her to allow her to leave her apartment. She was initially granted a privilege of spending three hours outside per day, but her lawyers in a new plea urged the judge to allow her unrestricted movement because she won’t constitute a flight risk.

Prosecutors, however, opposed granting her unrestricted movement because, even though her American passport was confiscated, she might obtain a Nigerian passport and flee. Consequently, the prosecutors said she should only be allowed to go out from 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. on weekdays for her business errands.