HANK J. BRIGHTMAN
As a child growing up in the bustling city of Lagos, Nigeria, Tom Nakafe believed that he could accomplish anything he set his mind to. His father, Paul, was a successful and highly respected engineer who held a senior management position with an international petroleum corporation. Tom's mother, Larayna, had her own burgeoning medical practice and was considered among the top pediatricians in the region. Tom excelled at languages and fluently spoke English and French, as well as his native Hausa and Igbo. Much like his father, Tom had an outstanding grasp of algebra, trigonometry and calculus, the latter of which he had essentially taught himself during a holiday break at his family's luxurious summer house (in between soccer lessons with his older brother, Awayle, who played for Nigeria's national team). Tom was an exceptional athlete in his own right, regularly starting as a striker on his private secondary school's soccer team, despite being among its youngest members. He daydreamed that after finishing his undergraduate studies at Oxford, he would complete law school, study international diplomacy and ultimately work abroad, maybe even someday as an envoy at the United Nations in New York. Perhaps he could even join a local football club (provided the Americans understood the difference between his version of football and their own).
Staring out onto the rain-soaked, potholed main street of urban Vining-ton, New Jersey, through a dirty storefront window, Tom found it difficult to accept that nearly 20 years had passed since his childhood dreams had been forever shattered. The series of violent, bloody coups in Nigeria that ultimately silenced the upper-middle class and plunged his family, as well as the families of just about everyone he knew, into chaos felt like they had happened yesterday. Not that he was complaining. Tom considered himself especially lucky to have escaped Lagos with his life, unlike his mother, father and older brother — each of whom perished at different times but under the same circumstances (conviction for high treason against the reigning military government followed by execution).
He was also thankful that his boyhood friend, Yohimbe Aglean, had also found his way from Lagos to London, and then ultimately to New Jersey. Since they first spotted each other across a row of cabs at Newark's Liberty Airport (Tom was driving an unlicensed cab waiting for a fare, and Yohimbe was a skycap for a major airline), they had become inseparable. Yohimbe was good with computers, and — despite the fact that he had no working papers required of immigrants — had enrolled in several advanced courses in Web design and language programming at the local community college.
Given their shared and steadfast commitment to success, coupled with Tom's penchant for trade and Yohimbe's innate abilities with technology, it came as no surprise when they decided to go into business together in their surrogate homeland of Vinington. A gritty, working-class community teaming with a melting pot of hardworking people from West Africa's poorest nations, Tom felt drawn to Vinington's bustling — albeit disheveled — downtown. It was here that Tom and Yohimbe opened PLAY Technology, Inc., which Tom chose to memorialize after his parents and older brother (Paul, Larayna and Awayle), and Yohimbe simply name for himself.
"Just got a new load of credit card numbers, Tom!" Yohimbe's proclamation snapped his friend out of a coma-like gaze through the small space in the Plexiglas window that was enclosed in a metal grate. The storefront looked out onto Vinington's abandoned Main Street at midnight on a Wednesday. For reasons he couldn't fully explain, Tom found Yohimbe's cheerful disposition annoying. Perhaps it was how eager to please Yohimbe seemed, a trait that Tom could remember as far back as their childhood in Lagos, and which he regarded as a sign of weakness in his longtime friend. Tom was astonished at Yohimbe's willingness to open up their fictitious business and to prey upon the very people who could have been their opponents in football matches, — had civil unrest not come so suddenly to Nigeria. Tom considered himself the senior partner in the business, a fact that he repeated with it regularity to Yohimbe (who rarely complained) but was also careful not to put in writing in their incorporation documents.
"Great," Tom replied dryly, but with just enough inflection to ensure Yohimbe would consider this to be high praise. "Sweepstakes site?" Tom continued.
"No," Yohimbe chirped happily, "they're from the Amazon.com mirror site one of our associates created last night."
The brainchild of owners Tom Nakafe and Yohimbe Aglean, PLAY Technology, Inc., appeared to represent the perfect combination of leading-edge entrepreneurship and service to the community. Comparable to the myriad of bodegas that were a common sight in northern New Jersey, the bustling business offered the amenities of a first-class groceria, ranging from infant formula and diapers to a wide variety of sofritos, beans and rice. Lottery tickets, beer, wine and cigarettes were also available in abundance. Tom realized early on that if he could attract customers seeking their daily provisions, he might also be able to entice them into purchasing items normally beyond their financial reach, such as plasma televisions, digital cameras and computers. He did this by offering "easy credit" installment plans. In exchange for immediately receiving their new electronic items, customers would turn over their entire weekly paychecks to him, and he would provide them with in-store credit, which they could use to purchase groceries and other incidentals. Adding to PLAY Technology's substantial profit margin was its markup on "gray-market" products (i.e., electronics purchased outside of the United States devoid of warranties) and the 10-percent service fee collected for converting customers' paychecks into in-store credit.
Yohimbe was the more extroverted, albeit overly blunt, of the two partners. It was he who convinced the Vinington Business Owners Association that it would be in their best interest to allow PLAY Technology, Inc., to foray into other ventures, including providing low- or no-cost after-hours computer training to the seemingly eager residents of the community, offering income-tax preparation clinics and working with representatives of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. He also encouraged them to support his interests in the New Jersey Higher Education Authority, by providing seminars on housing assistance and student loans. Yohimbe's efforts at community outreach had proven so successful that he and Tom had been twice recognized in formal resolutions by the City Council as the model for corporate-civic partnerships. Indeed, the partners of PLAY Technology, Inc., had started planning a second store in nearby Jersey City. Kanja Wohmana — who was born and raised in Jersey City and served as the current manager of the Vinington store — would run the new location, along with periodic assistance from fellow employees Hank Kristmis and Robert deFatha.
Kanja, Hank and Robert had reason to celebrate the prospect of their business franchise opportunity with Tom and Yohimbe. The original PLAY Technology location in Vinington was a true success story, at least in terms of an illegal enterprise masquerading as a legitimate business and community-support organization. Over the course of the two-and-a-half years since Tom and Yohimbe established the company, PLAY Technology had generated more than 37 fabricated Section 8 housing claims, 18 fraudulent student loan applications and 11 false federal and state income tax refund filings, resulting in government payments of more than $811,000 to fictitious parties. About two dozen sales associates — the term Yohimbe preferred used to describe the community members who had essentially indentured themselves to the store by amassing significant debts and who received in-store credit for engaging in online credit card, bank and other identity phishing schemes for PLAY Technology — had netted nearly $322,000 for the company. When this hefty sum was added to the $76,000 and $22,000 in advance-fee fraud scams that PLAY Technology had successfully perpetrated on a prominent Essex County judge and a respected superintendent of schools, respectively, Tom and Yohimbe could boast profits of more than $1.2 million — a success story that would make even Horatio Alger blush.
Entering its third year of operation, as PLAY Technology continued to grow in community prestige and profitability, its illicit activities also increased substantially. Many of the company's customers had purchased expensive electronic items that they simply could not afford — especially with the large service fees imposed on them for converting their paychecks into in-store credits. Few of them were therefore in no position to argue when Tom and Yohimbe began offering additional merchandise credits or preferred-customer discounts for attending their after-hours information sessions in computer training, public housing assistance and student loan applications. In reality, these courses were little more than data-entry production mills; participants would complete and submit online Section 8 lower-income applications and Free Application for Student Aid forms using the names and personal information of friends, coworkers and even data from patrons at the various retail establishments and hotels where a number of them worked. Many of these late-night training sessions would last in excess of five to six hours without breaks.
Yohimbe, the more technologically savvy of the two partners, occasionally identified a training participant who possessed an unusual aptitude for computers. These special customers would be retained by PLAY Technology as new associates and taught the art and science of Web site design and desktop publishing; after which they would put their newfound proficiency to use producing false identification documents (e.g., birth certificates, utility bills, etc.), generating fictitious bank checks and developing "mirror-image" Web sites of legitimate businesses that could be used to phish for credit card numbers and other personal information. Kanja Wohmana, Hank Kristmis, and Robert deFatha had each been initially discovered by Yohimbe for possessing such talents. They would still periodically pitch in and produce advance-fee (i.e., Nigerian 419 scams) e-mail distribution lists on the increasingly rare occasions when business was slow.
Unfortunately for the owners and associates of PLAY Technology, as the frequency of their scams increased, the number of consumer complaints of fraudulent charges for electronics on their credit card statements and new of lines of credit that they had not applied for rose, and the number of major banks receiving forged or counterfeit checks also grew. Targeted fraud analysis reports from the major credit card companies began showing a spike in disputed transactions emanating from the Vinington area. But these indications and warnings might not have resulted in law enforcement action were it not for the incident involving the Honorable Frank T. High-bottom, a well-respected Essex County judge.
According to Judge Highbottom, the matter began innocently enough. He had received an e-mail from an elderly widow in Lagos, Nigeria, whose late husband had been a Deputy Finance Minister for nearly six years. Upon her husband's sudden and mysterious death (purportedly payback for his public stand against corruption in Nigeria's banking industry), his widow had managed to conceal $7 million from the local authorities. In exchange for Judge Highbottom's assistance in relocating these funds from Nigeria to the United States (which involved a complex process of bribes to public officials and wire transfers abroad), she would provide him with 10 percent of the sum for his personal use. Although an embarrassed Judge Highbottom maintained that his motives were simply to assist a widow whose husband had "stood up for what is right," when his local bank threatened to foreclose on his lavish home and notify the media of his outstanding debts of more than $76,000, he grudgingly reported the matter to his long-time acquaintance, my boss, Randolph Morrisey, who was serving as the Special Agent in Charge (SAIC) of the Newark Field Office of the U.S. Secret Service. Among SAIC Morrisey's many responsibilities was managing the Interagency Nigerian Organized Crime Task Force (INOCTF).
Charged with investigating a wide range of criminal offenses emanating from West Africa or involving Nigerian nationals in the United States, the primary mission of INOCTF includes thwarting the financial crimes (e.g., fraud, forgery, phishing, counterfeiting and advance-fee scams) that had grown exponentially since the Nigerian military coup. To provide adequate investigative resources to address the complexity of Nigerian organized crime, a variety of federal, state and local law enforcement agencies — each of which brought its own individual resources and legal authority to the group — were assigned to the task force. As the lead for the INOCTF, SAIC Morrisey assigned me as the full-time intelligence analyst on the case. He chose me to lead the day-to-day case operations of the INOCTF for several reasons. First, while local police departments might assign detectives to run task forces, most federal-state-local combined working groups do not because analysts are the glue that holds the case together; whereas agents or investigators travel often or frequently rotate through different squads or other projects during the course of a lengthy investigation. Second, I already possessed more than 10 years of experience as both a military and civilian analyst specializing in drug trafficking, money laundering and financial crimes; many of these facets are common to INOCTF cases. Lastly, my doctorate in social science research methods ensured my comfort employing both qualitative and quantitative methods, including inductive data visualization. This analytic approach stresses reliance on an ever-expanding base of data that unites multiple databases to link what might otherwise appear to be unconnected information (e.g., financial transaction records, telephone call logs, business and personal e-mails, Section 8 applications, income tax filings and student loan applications).
The Secret Service agents and I worked closely with members of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement, U.S. Postal Inspection Service, Department of State's Bureau of Diplomatic Security, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, U.S. Housing and Urban Development's Office of the Inspector General, the Internal Revenue Service, Essex and Hudson County Prosecutor's Offices, the New Jersey State Police and the Vinington Police Department. The task force not only included special agents and police officers, but also intelligence analysts, linguists fluent in Hausa and Igbo and representatives of the banking industry and major credit card companies. The political star power of Judge Highbottom was enough to launch INOCTF into high gear. Its momentum was further accelerated when Dr. Frances Meyerson, the much-loved, long-serving superintendent of schools in West Orange, New Jersey, also sheepishly acknowledged she had been conned out of about $22,000. This was money that she believed she was giving to the family of a deceased teacher who had been killed in a pro-Democracy rally, in hopes of helping them escape Nigeria with their "modest" inheritance of $2.8 million, which they had managed to conceal from government officials. The e-mails she received — first from the murdered teacher's family and later from a "prestigious" law firm in London — certainly appeared legitimate, not unlike the electronic correspondence Judge Highbottom had received from the First National Bank of Lagos verifying the substantial assets of the grieving Deputy Finance Minister's widow.
Not reported by the media was the fact that in neither the Highbottom nor Meyerson cases were their actions wholly altruistic. Indeed, both had been assured by their contacts that they would be properly compensated by the aggrieved with sums in excess of $1 million. Of course, our task force knew this, as well as the fact that there was no Deputy Finance Minister's widow, no murdered teacher's family and certainly no millions of dollars in assets to be smuggled out of Nigeria. Regardless, this was the lucrative hook that kept advance-fee fraud patsies engaged until master perpetrators such as Tom and Yohimbe financially bled them dry.
Task force work is not easy, and in the nearly 11-month investigation that ensued, the long hours of surveillance, seemingly endless dumpster dives (court-approved, warranted searches of trash receptacles to collect incriminating documents) and interviews with erstwhile associates-turned-informants for whom English was neither their first nor second language proved challenging. For example, collecting hours of surreptitious video often meant that we had to forego our children's sporting events, postpone wedding anniversaries and reschedule birthdays. Efforts to glean from dump-sters fictitious tax returns, W-2s and Section 8 applications seemed to take place in the worst weather imaginable and when the dumpsters were nearly overflowing with week-old sweet-and-sour chicken and rancid spaghetti (at least we hoped the long worm-like things we were sifting through were spaghetti noodles). The task force was fortunate to include two members of Immigrations and Customs Enforcement who spoke fluent Hausa and Igbo. They were contemporaneously tasked with communicating with the nearly two dozen confidential informants involved in the case and translating hours of audio and video conversations among Tom, Yohimbe and their associates picked up on the federally approved wiretaps in the store and on their telephones. Eleven months is a long time to devote to a case, which meant we had frequent turnover in agents and officers due to competing priorities within their respective agencies.
Fortunately, as an intelligence analyst, I was not subjected to this same frenetic travel rotation, and could ensure a continual investigative thread and maintain momentum on the case. Given the ability to focus specifically on this case, and by applying data visualization software to this large criminal enterprise, I was able to graphically depict relationships between quantitative and qualitative datasets — something that could not have been accomplished using traditional analytic techniques. In short, I was able to both account for and visually display the details of the case by linking more than $1.2 million in fraud losses and victims with PLAY Technologies, Tom Nakafe and Yohimbe Aglean. My analyses also linked Kanja Wohmana, Hank Kristmis and Robert deFatha to the scheme, along with 22 lesser associates. This graphic representation proved critical in enticing the majority of defendants to plead guilty or accept plea agreements (including Tom Nakafe), and to convict Yohimbe Aglean at trial.
Equally important, I provided this chart and associated findings to other law enforcement entities in the United States and abroad, including INTERPOL. Such information-sharing efforts are critical in combating organized crime, because they allow intelligence professionals to inductively connect seemingly disparate pieces of information about criminal groups. In the case of PLAY Technology, providing this data to INOCTF offices in other states and countries led investigators to uncover a robust public housing fraud network linking Nakafe and Aglean to similar perpetrators in Cleveland, Ohio, and Saint Louis and Branson, Missouri, and an extensive advance-fee ring based in Lagos, Nigeria, with tentacles stretching to London, Toronto and Newark.
After nearly a year of dumpster diving, surveillance operations, financial link analysis, confidential informant monitoring and victim queries, the Newark-based INOCTF received approval from the Office of the U.S. Attorney for the District of New Jersey to execute search, seizure and arrest warrants for Tom Nakafe, Yohimbe Aglean, 18 of their associates and the "alleged criminal enterprise doing business as PLAY Technology." Immediately after the arrests, U.S. Attorney Rick Thatcher read a statement to the press, touting the "intense cooperative investigative effort between a wide range of law enforcement agencies and public and private partners, which has successfully disrupted a long-standing and complex fraud ring with connections to several other states and countries. As a result of the efforts of these fine men and women," he continued, "identity theft will be markedly reduced in the greater Vinington area, and the integrity of public housing and education programs will be restored."
Trials for Nakafe and Aglean were handled separately in the District Court of New Jersey. In a plea agreement, Tom Nakafe pleaded guilty to seven counts of a 17-count indictment. He pleaded guilty to conspiracy (18 U.S.C. 371), possession of five or more fraudulent identification documents (18 U.S.C. 1028), Internet (wire) fraud in connection with federally subsidized housing (18 U.S.C. 1343), Internet (wire) fraud in connection with FHA mortgage fraud application, making false statements and entries on federal student loan documents (18 U.S.C. 1001), money laundering via federal income tax evasion (18 U.S.C. 1956) and access device fraud (18 U.S.C. 1029). Nakafe was able to leverage the fact that he had put very little in writing to prove that he was not the senior partner in PLAY Technology. Indeed, much of his attorney's argument focused on his client's assertion that he was "simply a pawn" of the technologically savvy Yohimbe Aglean, who he claimed had masterminded the entire scheme. Ultimately, Nakafe was sentenced to 37 months in federal prison and ordered to pay approximately $412,000 in restitution.
Dumbfounded by his longtime friend's deception, Yohimbe Aglean chose not to accept a plea agreement and went to trial. After nearly four weeks, he was found guilty of conspiracy to commit Internet (wire) fraud in connection with federally subsidized housing (18 U.S.C. 371), Internet (wire) fraud in connection with federally subsidized Section 8 housing (18 U.S.C. 1343), access device fraud (18 U.S.C. 1029) and use of computers to engage in identity theft (18 U.S.C. 1030 and 18 U.S.C. 1028). He was sentenced to 37 months in federal prison, three years of probation following his release, and was ordered to pay more than $600,000 in restitution.
Aglean subsequently appealed his case on the grounds that some of the evidence introduced in court should have been suppressed. His counsel argued that one of the vehicles searched belonged to Aglean's cousin, who was not involved in any illicit activity, and that the evidence obtained therein should not have been considered by the jury. The appellate court affirmed the defendant's conviction, but vacated his sentence and remanded him for resentencing.
Defendant Kanja Wohmana pleaded guilty to theft of government funds (18 U.S.C. 666) involving the Section 8 assistance program. He was sentenced to two years of probation and ordered to pay restitution in the amount of $14,000. Hank Kristmis and Robert deFatha were each sentenced to six months of home detention and ordered to make restitution to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development in the amount of $48,000. Each pleaded guilty to one count of theft of U.S. government funds (18 U.S.C. 666).
Twenty-two other suspects were deemed "unindicted co-conspirators." Many of them were the sales associates — the women and men who amassed large debts at PLAY Technology and were paying off their debts by engaging in the extensive after-hours fraud scams directed by Nakafe and Aglean. In exchange for their cooperation as confidential informants and for providing testimony against Nakafe and Aglean they were not charged. They also agreed to neither apply for, nor obtain, federally subsidized housing or educational assistance for at least three years.
Note
Lessons Learned
While internal and external auditors appropriately focus much of their attention on identifying theft within an organization perpetrated by an individual employee or a few "bad apples," we must not discount the fact that — as former chief of the fraud section of the U.S. Department of Justice Herbert Edlehertz asserted more than 40 years ago — some businesses do exist purely for the purpose of engaging in fraud and other white-collar crimes. Based on the PLAY Technology case and the myriad of other Nigerian fraud cases investigated each year, the imagination of those who would perpetrate such schemes cannot be underestimated.
Moreover, given the complexity of such enterprises, law enforcement officials would benefit from employing a variety of inductive analytic techniques including data visualization, link association charts and the continuum of money management to successfully identify schemes and bring the guilty parties to justice. We should remain cognizant that Nigerian organized crime is a growing octopus, with the body firmly embedded in the art of advance-fee fraud. However, its tentacles — some of which stretch to the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada and beyond — are often inextricably linked to other illicit offenses, including identity theft, access device fraud, bank fraud, heroin trafficking and money laundering. Accordingly, information sharing across federal, state and international borders is essential.
Hank J. Brightman is an Associate Research Professor of War Gaming at the U.S. Naval War College. He previously served as an Associate Professor and Chair of the Criminal Justice Department at Saint Peter's College from 2000 to 2008. Hank has more than 16 years of varied experience in law enforcement, investigations and intelligence analysis with the U.S. Department of the Interior, U.S. Secret Service and the U.S. Navy. The views and opinions expressed in this case study are the authors', and do not necessarily represent those of the Naval War College, Department of the Navy, or the U.S. Government.