Ping Express CEO, Anslem Oshionebo and COO, Opeyemi Odeyale have been sentenced to 27 months in federal prison after pleading guilty to failure to maintain an effective anti-money laundering program. The IT/Business Development bagged a prison sentence of 42 months for his involvement.
The company, Ping Express, faces five years of probation and a fine of up to $500,000.
According to a report from the US Department of Justice, the Texas based company admitted that it transmitted more than $167 million overseas, including $160 million transmitted to Nigeria without seeking sufficient details about the sources or purposes of the funds involved in the transactions, or the customers initiating the transmissions.
Founded in 2014 by co-founders, Anslem Oshionebo and Opeyemi Odeyale, Ping Express was formed in December 2014 and launched its service in December 2015 to disrupt remittance industry.
According to the report,
“Through our special agents and forensic accountants, we work endlessly to eradicate crimes involving money laundering and bulk cash smuggling,” said Christopher Miller, Acting Special Agent in Charge of Homeland Security Investigations Dallas. “Our investigative reach provides access to a wide range of financial networks allowing HSI to disrupt any criminal organization attempting to exploit global trade.”
According to court documents, the company – which was licensed to transmit money but was not licensed to conduct currency exchange – charged U.S. customers a fee to remit money to beneficiaries in Nigeria and other African nations.
By law, Ping was required to report any suspicious transactions to regulators. In plea papers, it admitted that it failed to file a single report over a three-year period, despite a significant amount of suspicious customer activity.
The company outlined its anti-money laundering policy in a memo to state regulators, claiming it would cap first-time customer transactions at $499, cap daily transactions at $3,000, and cap monthly transactions at $4,500. However, in plea papers, the company admitted it allowed more than 1,500 customers to violate these rules. In one instance, Ping allowed a customer to remit more than $80,000 in a single month – more than 17 times the purported limit.
Ping also admitted that it conducted money transmission business in states in which it was not licensed to do so, including Nevada, New Jersey, Utah, West Virginia, and Connecticut. The company claimed to have software that could detect and deter transmissions initiated in “unlicensed” states, but in reality, it admitted, the program didn’t function. In its summaries to state regulators, Ping chose to include a column labeled “IP Location,” but only recorded states in which Ping was properly licensed: Texas, Maryland, Georgia, Washington, and Washington, DC.
Three individuals – including two of Ping’s top customers – previously pleaded guilty to transmitting illegally-derived funds through Ping.
One, Collins Orogun, admitted last week that he accepted a fee in exchange for transferring money for “romance scam” fraudsters and other criminals. In one instance, an Indiana woman sent $15,00 to “Carson Jacks,” a purported oil roughneck in the Gulf of Mexico she fell in love with online, after he told her he’d contracted malaria. In another, a second Indiana woman sent $6,300 to “Thomas Ken,” a purported Irish ship captain she fell in love with online, to fix his ship.
In two years, Mr. Orogun received more than $1.3 million in cash, cashier’s checks, and wires into several U.S. bank accounts he controlled, and then quickly moved more than $1 million of the funds to Africa through Ping. He faces up to 20 years in federal prison and is set to be sentenced on Jan. 23, 2023.
Sentencing has been set for Dec. 19, 2022.
