Vietnam: 2 Nigerians jailed 12 years in prison for email fraud

Despite stringent punishment being meted out to Nigerians who have fallen foul of laws in foreign countries, many still embark on such dangerous ventures just as this two Nigerian men, Christian Nnadike, 34, and Collins Deke, 37, have been sentenced to 12 years each in a Vietnam prison for hacking into emails of local companies, contacting the company's foreign partners and swindling them of various sums of money running into millions of dollars.

Nnadike and Deke, were jailed alongside a Vietnamese female accomplice, Le Thi Kim Quyen, who aided them in having the money lodged in her account and laundering same for the fraudsters.

Kim was sentenced to 15 years in prison while yet another Nigerian,  de facto husband of the Vietnamese lady, 39-year-old Mark Mamado Abdallah, said to be the husband of Kim, who ran the scamming syndicate in that country, is currently on the run.

The court also heard that the scammers pretended to be a British friend of two Vietnamese women on Facebook and asked them to send money as shipping fees to receive gifts.

According to prosecutors, the group defrauded many unsuspecting victims of over VND3.3 billion (US$150,000) between April and August 2013, with most of it coming from the email hacking scheme.

Prosecutors said over the four months, that Kim and her Nigerian husband hacked into the emails of several Vietnamese companies doing business with foreign companies.

They gave the information to Nnadike and Deke, who would later transfer it to another Nigerian man living in Malaysia.

 The unknown man in Malaysia then used the compromised email accounts to contact the victims’ foreign partners, asking them to send payments to a bank account opened by Quyen and Abdallah.