A Nigerian yahoo boy, Saheed Sunday Owolabi, has been sentenced to 15 years in prison for involvement in $1.5 million wire fraud and money laundering.

A federal judge on Tuesday sentenced Mr Owolabi upon trial for his role defrauding victims from the United States and laundering over $1.5 million to Nigeria. 

“Mr Owolabi was convicted of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and conspiracy to commit money laundering,” the U.S. Department of Justice said in a statement on Tuesday.

Investigations by the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation stated that Mr Owolabi disguised to be a woman to build online relationships with men in the United States of America, a scheme known as a romance scam.

Having established fake romantic relationships with his victims, Mr Owolabi swindled them by convincing them to wire funds into his personal account which he laundered to Nigeria. 

Mr Owolabi and others used bank accounts provided by the victims to launder money from other fraudulent operations and stole more than $120,000 from a victim in the EDNC, among many other victims. 

The U.S. Attorney, Ellis Boyle, called Mr Owolabi a cheat, adding that his “conviction underscores the FBI’s unwavering commitment to identifying, disrupting, and dismantling international fraud and money laundering networks who target victims across the United States.”

This comes as another case of Nigerian arrested, tried and convicted of fraud in the U.S.