{"id":67416,"date":"2025-06-05T16:58:27","date_gmt":"2025-06-05T16:58:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/?p=67416"},"modified":"2025-06-05T16:58:27","modified_gmt":"2025-06-05T16:58:27","slug":"fbi-arrests-nigerian-tech-queen-over-multi-million-dollar-scam","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/2025\/06\/05\/fbi-arrests-nigerian-tech-queen-over-multi-million-dollar-scam\/","title":{"rendered":"FBI Arrests Nigerian \u2018Tech Queen\u2019 Over Multi Million Dollar Scam"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Patrick Idowu<\/strong><\/p>\n

Sapphire Egemasi, a Nigerian tech enthusiast, faces a potential prison sentence of more than 20 years in the United States following her arrest by the Federal Bureau of Investigation.<\/p>\n

She was taken into custody in connection with a large scale fraud scheme targeting several US government agencies.<\/p>\n

Egemasi, a programmer who operates a Devpost account, was arrested around April 10, 2025, in Bronx, New York, along with other co conspirators including Samuel Kwadwo Osei, believed to have led the syndicate.<\/p>\n

Their arrest follows a federal grand jury indictment filed in 2024 charging them with multiple counts of internet fraud and money laundering for crimes committed between September 2021 and February 2023.<\/p>\n

Egemasi and her Ghanaian co defendants allegedly conspired to defraud the city of Kentucky of millions of dollars.<\/p>\n

Investigators say her role involved designing fake websites that impersonated official US government domains to steal login credentials and facilitate the transfer of stolen funds.<\/p>\n

Before her arrest, Egemasi was reportedly based in Cambridge in the United Kingdom, although authorities believe she previously lived in Ghana where she likely established ties with her co conspirators.<\/p>\n

She allegedly acted as the syndicate\u2019s tech lead, overseeing the creation of fraudulent websites and managing wire transfers to accounts controlled by the group.<\/p>\n

Text message records indicate that in August 2022, the syndicate rerouted nine hundred and sixty five thousand dollars stolen from Kentucky into a PNC Bank account.<\/p>\n

In a separate transaction at around the same time, three hundred and thirty thousand dollars was funneled into an account with Bank of America.<\/p>\n

To hide the source of her wealth, Egemasi reportedly claimed to have held multiple roles mostly internships at major multinational companies including British Petroleum, H&M and Zara.<\/p>\n

Widely known online as the \u2018tech queen\u2019, Egemasi cultivated a polished digital persona, especially on LinkedIn where she showcased her skills and flaunted a luxurious lifestyle.<\/p>\n

Her social media profiles featured photos of lavish vacations to destinations such as Greece and Portugal, funded according to prosecutors by illicit proceeds.<\/p>\n

Egemasi and her co accused remain in federal custody and are being held pending trial in Lexington, Kentucky.<\/p>\n

If convicted, each faces up to twenty years in prison, significant financial penalties and eventual deportation to their home countries after serving their sentences.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Patrick Idowu Sapphire Egemasi, a Nigerian tech enthusiast, faces a potential prison sentence of more than 20 years in the United States following her arrest by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. She was taken into custody in connection with a large scale fraud scheme targeting several US government agencies. Egemasi, a programmer who operates […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":67417,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[181,172,180],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-67416","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-crime","category-news","category-technology"],"aioseo_notices":[],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67416","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/33"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=67416"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67416\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":67418,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67416\/revisions\/67418"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/67417"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=67416"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=67416"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=67416"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}