A US fintech company has pleaded guilty to laundering $160 million to Nigeria.
According to the US Department of Justice (DoJ), Ping Express “transferred millions of dollars from the United States to Africa and admitted that it failed to adequately guard against money laundering”.
Chad E. Meacham, United States Attorney for the Northern District of Texas, announced that Ping Express U.S. LLC pleaded guilty to failing to maintain an effective anti-money laundering programme.
Ping Express’s CEO Anslem Oshionebo and Ping COO Opeyemi Odeyale are both Nigerian-born executives who pleaded guilty to failing to maintain an effective anti-money laundering programme.
Aleoghena Okhumale, Ping’s IT/Business Development Manager, pleaded guilty to knowingly transmitting illegally obtained funds.
The CEO and COO were recently sentenced to 27 months in federal prison, while the IT/Business Development Manager received a 42-month sentence, according to the Department of Justice.
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The company faces up to five years on probation and a $500,000 fine. The sentencing is set for December 19, 2022.
According to US legal filings, Oshionebo and Odeyale were sentenced to 27 months in prison for failing to maintain effective anti-money laundering controls and unlicensed money transmitting.
Ping Express US LLC, the Dallas-based company they owned and operated, faces five years of probation and a fine of up to $500,000 after pleading guilty to a similar charge, while another executive received a 42-month sentence.
“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”.
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The company faces up to five years on probation and a $500,000 fine. The sentencing is set for December 19, 2022.
According to US legal filings, Oshionebo and Odeyale were sentenced to 27 months in prison for failing to maintain effective anti-money laundering controls and unlicensed money transmitting.
Ping Express US LLC, the Dallas-based company they owned and operated, faces five years of probation and a fine of up to $500,000 after pleading guilty to a similar charge, while another executive received a 42-month sentence.
According to court documents, the company was licenced to transmit money but not to conduct currency exchange – and charged US customers a fee to remit money to beneficiaries in Nigeria and other African countries.
Ping was required by law to notify regulators of any suspicious transactions. It admitted in plea papers to failing to file a single report over a three-year period, despite a significant amount of suspicious customer activity.
In a memo to state regulators, the company outlined its anti-money laundering policy, claiming that it would cap first-time customer transactions at $499, daily transactions at $3,000, and monthly transactions at $4,500.
However, the company admitted in plea papers that it allowed over 1,500 customers to violate these rules. In one case, Ping allowed a customer to send more than $80,000 in a single month, which was more than 17 times the stated limit.
Ping also admitted to conducting money-transfer business in states where it was not licenced, such as 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 it later admitted that the programme was ineffective. Ping chose to include a column labelled “IP Location” in its summaries to state regulators, but only recorded states in which Ping was properly licenced: Texas, Maryland, Georgia, Washington, and Washington, DC.
