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Wonga scam sees fraudsters sentenced to over 10 years

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  • 02/02/2016
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Wonga scam sees fraudsters sentenced to over 10 years
A group of fraudsters who swindled Wonga out of over £3m through fake loan applications has been jailed for more than 10 years by the Old Bailey.

The City of London Police investigation which dates back to 2013, saw more than 19,000 fraudulent loan applications totalling over £6.2m submitted to Wonga by the group. A failure in Wonga’s computer systems enabled more than half of the loans, averaging £3.8m in total, to be passed through into the bank accounts of the group.

Three of the nine individuals were convicted in November last year of entering into a money laundering arrangement.

Kelvin Okusanya, 31 from Coventry, Oluwamuyiwa Fasoranti, 32, from West London, and Sophia Pusey-Carroll, 46, from Harrow, were sent down for a total of more than 10 years on Friday, with Monika Solarz, 29 from North London, also sentenced for 18 months for the same charge.

Applicants to the loans were deemed to be victims of identity theft and had no knowledge of the loan applications being made in their name.

The case could come as a blow to Wonga’s reputation, with the court sentencing coming just weeks after it was named as one of the most improved brands of 2015 and subsequently received full consumer credit permissions by the Financial Conduct Authority.

A spokesperson for Wonga said: “This relates to an historical issue that was stopped in June 2013. We are pleased to hear the court case has been bought to a close conclusively.”

Using a tactic that made it trickier for Wonga to detect that funds were being paid to a single individual, the group obtained money from the applications through one ‘master’ Barclays current account, which was linked to a large number of eSavings accounts. After money from the linked savings accounts was funnelled into the master account, the group were able to withdraw the cash.

Okusanya, who was absent when sentenced, was the only member of the group found to be both submitting the loans and receiving proceeds from the application, seeing him also convicted of three counts of fraud by false representation.

Between December 2012 and March 2013, he was found to have submitted 60 loan applications to Wonga, worth just under £30,000, in the names of 60 different applicants with the monies being paid into 60 different bank accounts.

Before being located and arrested by the City of London Police, Okusanya fled the country, with detectives believing he had returned to Nigeria.

Other members of the group received suspended sentences and community orders ranging from 40 to 100 hours.

Police staff investigator Andy Cope from the City of London Police, said: “This group of money mules would have been working in close partnership with the people making the fraudulent loan applications, together taking millions of pounds from Wonga and committing identity crime on an industrial level.

“Being a money mule may seem like a relatively harmless offence, but law enforcement views it very differently. We are committed to stopping those middle-men who enable fraud and other crimes.”

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