Eagle police arrested a 38-year-old Nigerian man, Babajide Ayowole
Ogunnubi, on felony racketeering and theft charges for his part in a
classified ad scam involving a local newspaper and a Walmart in
Beaumont, Texas.
Ogunnubi allegedly convinced Linda Lazard Franks, 56, of Beaumont, to
sign for money orders and other financial transactions and then give
the money to him.
Franks told Eagle police that Ogunnubi told her that he had lots of
friends in the Houston and Beaumont areas who would send money to him.
Eagle police say Ogunnubi stole at least $3,124.56 between Oct. 22 and Nov 28, 2017. He is being held on $100,000 bond.
For her part in all this, Franks faces five felonies. She is accused
of stealing more than $28,000 in nine days through 28 fraudulent
transactions, some of them from Eagle County victims, Eagle police say.
Franks was arrested Jan. 6 and remains in the Eagle County jail on $30,000 bond.
Below is Police statement on how it all happened:
Late morning Nov. 28, 2017, Eagle Police Officer Bryce Hinton was
called to Eagle's Community Bank of Colorado to meet with two women who
said they had been scammed.
One of the women said she answered a classified ad in the Vail Daily
asking for a part-time personal assistant to do some shopping and other
errands. "Send resume to executiveoffice999@gmail.com ," the ad said.
Meanwhile, foreign hackers broke into the Google account of a Chino,
California, man, Todd Michael McNitt, and used McNitt's stolen identity
to buy the classified ad to run their scams, police said.
Hinton tracked McNitt to Chino Hills, California, where McNitt told
them his Google account had been hacked and the hackers got his personal
information from his emails.
The real McNitt produced a Google alert that Google sent him when his
account was hacked. Hinton said McNitt changed his passwords within 15
minutes of speaking with Google.
The Eagle woman, a local college student, answered the classified ad
by email on Oct. 26, 2017. Three days later, she received an email
response saying she got the job.
The woman heard from not-McNitt again on Nov. 2, 2017, after she had
asked him if the job was a scam. The alleged scammers assured her it was
not a scam and produced McNitt's California driver's license and some
LinkedIn references.
Four days later, the alleged scammers asked the woman to buy a Target
gift card using McNitt's reportedly forged identity and to make sure
they could access it.
Four days after that, the woman followed their instructions and
opened a checking account in hers and McNitt's name, again giving the
scammers access to it.
The alleged scammers told the woman they had transferred $4,500 into her personal account.
Over the next few days, they told the woman to send thousands of dollars from her account to a foster home in Austin, Texas.
Three days later, the woman discovered that her checking account was
overdrawn by $3,124.56. She also discovered that the New York bank the
scammers said they were using had refused to pay the $4,500.
That's about the time she also received a message from Craigslist
saying the email she had answered and the code she used was a scam.
"Any request for it is a scam," the Craigslist message said.
Eagle police asked the Vail Daily for information about the ad. With
that information and by working with Walmart Global Investigations, they
tracked the transactions to Franks, who was working in Walmart's
Beaumont, Texas, "money center."
Between Nov. 20 and 29, when the Eagle County woman was being
scammed, Franks had completed 28 transactions for $22,472.50, Walmart
investigator Jay Johnston told the Eagle police.
Walmart security video shows Franks signing receipts for money orders
and putting the money in her pocket, an Eagle police report said.
Eagle police's Hinton found Franks on Facebook, wearing a Walmart
vest and shirt, smiling at the camera with money stacked in the
background.
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