A mid-level criminal gang member who laundered over €1m stolen in online fraud and bank scams has been jailed for almost five-and-a-half years.
30-year-old Sodiq Jimoh, of Rossfield Close in Tallaght, Dublin, pleaded guilty to helping an organised crime group and nine counts of money laundering between May 2019 and August 2020.
He was due to receive 30% of the money.
Among those defrauded of thousands of euro was a woman in her 70s.
Jimoh came to Ireland when he was nine years old and graduated from the Dublin Business School with a degree in marketing.
Judge Martin Nolan described him as "an intelligent, competent and very busy man" otherwise he would not have been recruited to get involved in the organisation.
He was, he said, "seriously involved in crime" and had helped launder money that had been "obtained under various schemes, frauds and scams".
His job was to withdraw money from the bank accounts of various money mules and also to access the online banking of many of the victims in order to move cash.
Jimoh would take control of a bank account online after a six-digit access number was sent to his phone and move cash in and out of various accounts.
He was also captured on CCTV footage making ATM withdrawals from various money mule accounts.
Mules are people whose accounts are used by criminals to launder money.
Jimoh was targeted by the Garda National Economic Crime Bureau's Operation Skein, a global investigation into invoice redirect fraud and compromised email scams.
The investigation focused on two Ulster Bank accounts with frauds of over €387,000 and €83,000.
A phone number associated with the accounts had been registered to Jimoh while the owners of the accounts did not have access to them.
Gardaí then linked his Bank of Ireland and AIB accounts and found lodgements totalling €26,000 into different accounts linked to Jimoh.
WhatsApp conversations between him and two other people on his phone included screenshots of bank details, with Jimoh stating: "I need a bank card for this."
"Fam, at the end of the day it is free money," he said.
Detective Garda Ester Devally said he controlled and managed the movement of the money for the gang.
Judge Nolan jailed him today at the Dublin Circuit Criminal Court for five years and four months.
