On September 9, 2022, the FBI Philadelphia office requested assistance in locating Chidozie Collins Obasi. OBASI is accused of being part of a conspiracy to steal more than $30 million related to COVID fraud in New York. How did the scam work? Much of this goes back to a typical pattern: a fake job offer and a counterfeit check. But in this case, there was so much more!
During the COVID-19 crisis, the New York State Department of Health was responsible for purchasing and allocating ventilators to New York State hospitals. Two of their hospitals will be affected in this case. Guthrie, a nonprofit health care system based in Sayre, Pennsylvania, but operating two hospitals in New York, and Northwell Health, another nonprofit health care network, at the time the largest provider of rehabilitation and nursing facilities, also providing emergency care and palliative care. home health care and services.
Part of the scam carried out by OBASI involved offering for sale three ventilation products sold by the German company Draeger, Inc., whose U.S. headquarters is located in Telford, Pennsylvania. Their three most popular fans sold in the United States were the Evita 300 ($15,000), Savina 300 ($17,000), and Evita V500 ($21,000).
Members of the OBASI conspiracy opened bank accounts in foreign banks in China, the United Arab Emirates and Indonesia. They then registered similar domain names that appeared to be those of Tawada Healthcare, MedWOW and Tiansong Medical. OBASI and his team then fabricated false identities and pretended to be employees of the impersonated companies, including Luiz Alfredo, Marc Alfredo and others.
OBASI used a Ukraine-based spamming service (snov.io) and VOIP accounts created through TextMe and TextNow to allow them to use virtual phone numbers based in France and the United States that would be redirected to their actual devices.
WORK FROM HOME SCAM
OBASI then sent thousands of emails to job seekers in the United States offering them employment with one of the spoofed companies. They explained that because their companies were based overseas and did not have a banking presence in the United States, they had to hire them to accept payments on behalf of their North American clients. The new “employees” were thus deceived and acted as mules for the scammers, opening bank accounts or allowing their own accounts to be used to receive funds, for which they would receive a commission in addition to their “salary”.
New employees received counterfeit checks sent by a co-conspirator in Canada and were told to deposit the checks into their personal accounts. The checks were delivered via companies such as DHL and FedEx. Funds from these checks, which employees believed to be payments for the sale of ventilators, were then wired to OBASI’s international bank accounts and others held overseas. Employees received more than $11 million in checks, although only $1,005,227 was sent to the OBASI crew. The work from home scam aspect took place from approximately September 2018 to March 2020.
FAN SALES
Starting in March 2020, the OBASI team noticed the shortage of ventilators and determined that they could make more money by claiming to have a large quantity of Draeger ventilators to sell to U.S. companies. Their next round of work-from-home scams involved recruiting medical sales professionals to act as agents to sell the ventilators, which this class of employees believed were being held in large numbers by Tawada Healthcare. OBASI set out to research how these fans were normally sold, using false identities to contact Draeger and ask him questions about their fans. He then prepared quotes and sales contracts, as well as letters of guarantee, claiming that Tawada Healthcare (which he represented as “Marc Alfredo”) had the ventilators in stock and was prepared to sell them.
The French TextNow phone number was listed as a reference account of a satisfied French customer who had worked with Marc Alfredo and was happy with the fans he purchased. The US customers purchased the ventilators from OBASI’s “work from home” sales team who received payments and then wired the money, less their commission, to OBASI’s bank accounts in Hong Kong.
Between March 2020 and April 2020, they prepared offer letters for Draeger ventilators worth $286,800,000! $30,689,560 was actually sent to OBASI and his crew, from New York State alone!
SBA COVID-19 EID Loan Program
The third phase of OBASI’s crimes involved stealing the identities of American citizens, which they had in abundance thanks to all the “job applications” they received. Using this information, the OBASI crew then applied for money from the U.S. Small Business Administration’s EID loan program. The loan processor, based in Des Moines, Iowa, sent the funds to “employees'” bank accounts, but the employees believed they were also payments for Draeger ventilators purchased from Tawada Healthcare, who they believed to be their employer. These funds were then transferred to bank accounts managed by OBASI and others via Western Union or by wire transfer to a bank account in Tangerang, Indonesia.
55 fraudulent SBA COVID-19 EID loan applications were paid, each to a different stolen identity, totaling an additional $455,300 in fraud, of which $277,400 was successfully transferred to Indonesia.
Domains used:
mailzj-tainsong(.)com – used to spoof Tiansong Medican
mailmedwowglobal(.)com = used to spoof MedWOW
alfredoluiz@mailmedwowglobal.com = (the Luiz Alfredo account)
emailthc(.)com = used to spoof Tawada Healthcare
863-855-3342 = a TextMe VOIP number (the “Alfredo Phone”)
marcalfredo@emailthc(.)com = Marc Alfredo’s fake email
marca@emailthc(.)com = another fake email from Marc Alfredo
al694218933@gmail.com = spam accounts used to hire and interact with employees
mc00674709@gmail.com
al4436621@gmail.com
luizalfredo434@gmail.com
372221lzfre@gmail.com
847273lzfre@gmail.com
mlf02314141@gmail.com
319marcdo@gmail.com
abraham@cartufinanceservice.com = a fake account of “Bill Cartu” posing as a MedWOW customer
Albert@bdicmail.com = a fake company “Albert Scott Breese / Black Diamond Investment Company of Santa Monica, CA”
info@accdepartment.org = John Albin was a pseudonym used by the Canadian co-conspirator to communicate with “Marc Alfredo” regarding where the checks should be sent.
fbi-fieldofficeny.com = used to fraudulently impersonate the FBI
More technical details
An example of the use of Snov(.)io was a MARCH 15, 2020 email sent to 162 Americans from 319marcdo@gmail.com asking “Hello, I was wondering if you are receiving my email regarding a contract position “.
If they responded, they would then receive emails from “marcalfredo@emailthc(.)com” explaining more about working at Tawada Helathcare, offering a 5% commission on any sales and their role in receiving payments from northern customers -Americans.
To make the quotes sent appear realistic, OBASI interacted with the real Tawada Healthcare, pretending to be “Dr. Collins” from the University of Rochester and requesting an urgent quote for the Evita 300 and Savina 300 ventilators.
OBASI also contacted Draeger for quote information, using the name “Collins Obasi” in the quote request and claiming to be an employee of Northwell Hospital. In response to questions received from potential clients, he posed several more technical questions in subsequent correspondence,
Using these quotes as a template, OBASI created fake quotes, among other things:
20 fans in GUTHRIE for $340,000
70 fans in GUTHRIE for $1,190,000
35 fans in GUTHRIE for $595,000
100 fans in NORTHWELL for $1,600,000
500 ventilators to New York State for $19,000,000
KeyBank disputed an outgoing transfer to Bank of China HK LTD that was intended for “Hong Kong Murphy Trading Co Limited”.
They received a response stating:
“I Surya Darma, Account Manager of Tawada Healthcare lakarta, Indonesia, authorize that we have requested funding of $12,637,660.00 to be wired to Bank of China HK LTD for a beneficiary named Hong Kong Murphy Trading Co Limited. These Funds are for a ventilator purchase order through the New York State Department of Health as delivery is of utmost importance due to the Covidl9 crisis. Please expedite the transfer urgently.
and…. they sent the money. (April 1, 2020)
The same day, “marcalfredo@emailthc(.)com” emailed a New York State employee a signed purchase order for 2,000 Draeger ventilators from Tawada Healthcare for $38,004,000 and requested that A 50% deposit will be sent by the State of New York. KeyBank account (ending in 0026) to an “employee” account at KeyBank ending in 4326.
A telegram was sent by this employee on April 2, 2020 to Bank of China HK LTD for $18,051,900 – the requested $19,002,000 less the “employee’s” 5% commission.
Things then get really crazy when OBASI has a member of his team dial an FBI special agent named Terrence Andrews, from the International Funds Transfer Monitoring department in the Albany field office, asking him to call him back on the number OBASI’s TextOne to discuss “recent transactions and dealings with a foreign company. This email was from “tandrews@fbi-fieldofficeny.com.”
Another co-conspirator then became “FBI Special Agent SN Philadelphia” and requested that they should only discuss the charges by contacting him at 267-792-1272 using the code “Operation Covid19” and that they shouldn’t talk to anyone else at the FBI. except him.
SUMMARY OF FEES
