A federal judge in Puerto Rico sentenced a Houston, Texas man to nearly eight years in prison this week for laundering more than $3.1 million stolen from business-email-compromise, romance, and unemployment-insurance fraud schemes. Prosecutors say Oluwasegun Baiyewu ran the laundering side of a scam network that turned stolen cash into used cars, then shipped those vehicles to West Africa to cash out the proceeds. The case, announced by the Justice Department’s Office of Public Affairs, shows how the money trail behind everyday scam calls and dating-app messages often ends thousands of miles from the victim.
A 95-Month Sentence Tied to a Six-Person Laundering Ring
Baiyewu, 40, led a conspiracy that operated between roughly May 2020 and October 2021, working with at least six co-conspirators based in the United States and Nigeria. A federal jury convicted him in August 2025 of one count of conspiracy to commit money laundering, and a judge imposed a 95-month prison term at sentencing on August 27, 2026. Court records describe a network that used encrypted messaging apps, including WhatsApp, to coordinate the flow of illicit money into vehicle purchases.
One episode detailed in court filings involved a Puerto Rican renewable-energy company tricked by a business-email-compromise scheme into wiring roughly $280,000 to accounts controlled by fraudsters and money launderers. Baiyewu allegedly used part of that money to help purchase salvaged cars in the United States, then arranged to export the vehicles to Nigeria so his co-conspirators overseas could benefit from the proceeds. Investigators say the pattern repeated across multiple victims, whose stolen retirement and household savings ultimately purchased vehicles that left the country before the fraud was ever detected.
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Why Romance and Business-Email Scams Keep Draining Retirement Accounts
Romance and business-email scams are not isolated crimes; they represent a growing share of what the FBI now tracks as elder fraud. Americans age 60 and older reported roughly $7.7 billion in losses to the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center in 2025, a 37 percent jump from the year before, according to the bureau’s 2025 Internet Crime Report. More than 201,000 people age 60 and older filed complaints with the bureau last year, and the average reported loss exceeded $38,500 per victim, a sum that can wipe out a year or more of a fixed retirement income.
Business-email-compromise fraud, the scheme that funded part of Baiyewu’s laundering operation, works differently but hits the same wallets. A scammer impersonates a vendor, employer, or trusted contact and persuades a bookkeeper or executive to wire funds to an account the fraudsters control, often within hours of the request. Retirees who serve as treasurers for community groups, small businesses, or family trusts face the same exposure as large corporations, and the money, once wired, is difficult to recover before it converts into cash, cryptocurrency, or in this case, a shipment of used cars.
The Cyber-Enabled Scam Initiative and Scam Center Strike Force
The Justice Department’s Criminal Division prosecuted the Baiyewu case through its Cyber-Enabled Scam Initiative, a unit created to speed up cases involving investment fraud, romance scams, government-imposter schemes, and financially motivated sextortion, according to the Justice Department’s announcement. The initiative is a founding member of the Scam Center Strike Force, launched in November 2025 by the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia to target the organized networks running these operations. Trial attorneys from the Criminal Division’s White Collar and Corporate Enforcement Section, along with an assistant U.S. attorney in Puerto Rico, prosecuted the case, which the department credited as part of its broader push to dismantle organized scam networks with global reach.
Investigators from the U.S. Postal Inspection Service, the Department of Labor’s Office of Inspector General, and the FBI’s San Juan Cyber Task Force built the case, with support from the National Unemployment Insurance Fraud Task Force and the COVID-19 Fraud Enforcement Strike Force. That level of coordination reflects how far the money traveled: from a bookkeeper’s inbox in Puerto Rico, through car dealerships in the United States, to buyers in Nigeria, before federal agents pieced the transactions back together.
Spotting a Scam Before the Money Leaves the Account
Financial professionals who work with retirees say the warning signs in cases like this one are consistent: a new online contact who quickly moves communication to a private messaging app, a request tied to an urgent deadline, and pressure to keep the transaction confidential. The FBI encourages anyone who receives an unexpected request for money or personal information to pause and verify the request through a separate, trusted channel before sending funds, guidance the bureau frames as taking a beat to check for red flags.
Victims and family members who suspect fraud can file a report with the Internet Crime Complaint Center or contact a local FBI field office, and doing so quickly matters: funds that are still in transit, such as a wire payment awaiting final clearance, have a better chance of being frozen or recovered than money already converted into vehicles or cryptocurrency. The Baiyewu sentence adds one more prosecuted case to a fraud economy that federal officials say continues to grow faster than the number of arrests that follow it.
This article was produced with AI assistance and reviewed by The Financial Wire editorial team.
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David M. Keller is a finance writer based in Columbus, Ohio, covering personal finance and consumer-focused economic topics. He earned his degree in journalism from Ohio University and began his career reporting on local business and economic trends for a regional media outlet. Since then, he has contributed to a variety of online publications, focusing on clear, practical coverage of topics such as cost of living, debt, and everyday financial decision-making.
