Frank Onyeachonam, a 49-year-old Nigerian, has failed to refund the £5 million he fraudulently obtained from pensioners through a fake lottery scheme, despite being jailed by a United States of America’s court 10 years ago.
Onyeachonam, known as ‘Fizzy’ for his love of vintage champagne, was found guilty of a criminal charge and sentenced to eight years in jail in 2014.
He was said to have deceived hundreds of pensioners into believing that they had won Australian lottery by sending prize letters conveying outrageous monetary benefits to them.
Daily Mail Online reported that Fizzy dispatched the fake letters to his American victims through lottery agents who asked them to pay activation fees to access the prize.
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The prosecution team found that the conman had a physical asset in Nigeria that could be sold to defray the money he had stolen from the vulnerable people.
The court ordered that he pay back £158,000 in terms of his realisable property located in Nigeria in 2015. However, a decade later, he is yet to comply.
In a bid to have the payback sum reduced, he has made a new application to the court to vary the sum, relying on the US Proceeds of Crime Act.
Stephen Earnshaw, his lawyer, said, “As of September 2015, Mr Onyeachonam had to pay that amount from the single asset property in Nigeria.
“The property has not been sold and full amount remains outstanding. The property was not restrained. The CPS and the NCA and those involved in the enforcement in Nigeria tried to bring about the enforcement of the asset.”
Till all issues are resolved, his bail remains subject to UK’s immigration bail terms.
Presiding over the case, Judge Alexia Durran said, “The application to the court is to determine the property is impossible to realise and remove that as an asset.
“I have Googled the Nigerian legal system and it would seem not as digital as ours. The test is a determination of whether or not the asset is impossible to be realised. If impossible, the confiscation order can be varied.
“We are waiting for the Nigerian authority to respond or process the application. I am not satisfied it is yet impossible to realise. These things take time. The challenges of the Nigerian system, the lack of IT, paperwork may be put on the wrong file or tray, files may be lost and so on.
“The officer in the case and those before him will continue to send documentation, and it seems to me to be wrong at this stage to say the asset is impossible to realise.”
The judge also said that “the order remains in place”.
Until his imprisonment, Onyeachonam lived a life of luxury, donning various kinds of expensive items.
Source: FIJ.ng
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