Two Nigerian men wanted in the United States for wire and computer fraud offences but fled to hide in Kenya were not lucky after a court ordered their extradition to face trial.
Ebuka Umeti and Frankline Okwonna were arrested in Nairobi in June last year after US authorities sent formal extradition requests to Kenya. The two had indictments and arrest warrants hanging over them from a court in Alexandria in the state of Virginia.
The fugitives remained in the Industrial Area remand for the remainder of the year as the DPP pushed their extradition application through a magistrates’ court.
Umeti and Okwonna are alleged to have defrauded their victims of over $1.1 million.
By the time of their arrest in Nairobi, the two West African men had been on the run for close to a year as the indictments had been issued on August 11, 2022.
Their alleged offences include conspiracy, wire fraud and computer intrusion for which they had been formally charged. The documents filed in court said the offences were also punishable in Kenya.
The US authorities alleged that Umeti and Okwonna along with their accomplices conducted business email scams “and distributed various types of malicious software and malware by which they gained unauthorised access to computers of businesses located in the US and and elsewhere between February 2019 and July 2020, thereby exploiting the access to deceive victims into transferring funds into custody of financial institution [and] banks.”
Court documents say, “The [DPP] contends that on July 12, 2023, following the issuance of provisional warrants by a court the US authorities availed the respective original warrants of arrest issued against the respondents herein by the United States district Court of Eastern District of Virginia in Alexandria, Virginia, in the USA which had jurisdiction vide case No.1 :22-cr-00123.”
The DPP said the evidential threshold cited against the two was solid to warrant the court endorsing the arrest warrants and giving the writ of extradition sought for the two to be brought to justice.
But in their defense, Okwonna’s first ground of contention in his sworn affidavit was that his rights under the Kenyan Constitution had been violated through illegal detention. He claimed that he had been arrested on June 11, 2023 but only arraigned in court three days later on June 14, contravening the 24-hour limit.
He also argued that for the extradition application to succeed, a probable cause must be apparent but that the evidence against them was inferior, contradictory and did not warrant being sent to US to be charged.
“He deposes that for an extradition case to succeed a probable cause has to be established but upon perusal of various affidavits and documents there is no nexus between the allegations that have been made and himself," defence documents state.
"He deposes that in the supporting affidavit sworn by Scott Nickerson, he mentions several names such as Franklin Holmes and Frankie Holmes, which he then uses to link to various crimes mentioned in the affidavit and yet the said names did not refer to him.”
To the charge that Okwonna used various fake emails in his phishing campaign to lure unsuspecting targets to have him access their bank accounts, the man denied ever using the listed email addresses.
“[He] further deposes and denies ever having used or registered emails such as [email protected], [email protected], [email protected] and more as stated by Scott Nickerson in the affidavit. He deposes that no evidence was attached of his ownership and control of the emails,” the defence stated.
The Nigerian also denied use of Facebook account Ifeanyi Chukwu and stated that his Facebook account was one name, franklin.okwonna, and that the suspicions against him were unwarranted as many people in his country use the names Ifeanyi Chukwu.
He also “stated that it was misleading and materially wrong for Nickerson to claim that the Facebook account [listed] belonged to him.”
“He deposes that a simple search in Google and various social media platforms will show that the name Frankline and Okwonna are very common names in his country and are not distinct nor unique identifiers and as such an email allegedly addressed to any of those names does not mean it was addressed to him,” the papers stated.
The court said dismissed the defences and ruled that the two had their cases well proven against them. The extradition order was given on December 15.