A U.S. District Court in the Eastern District of Tennessee has ordered the forfeiture of $125,000 in cryptocurrency linked to three Nigerians after the funds were traced to an online scam targeting an American victim.
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The ruling, delivered on April 30 by Judge Travis McDonough, came after months of failed attempts to contact the Nigerian suspects — Martins Eromosele Iyere, Moses Olumide Sokale, and Olawumi Stephen Adewale — who never filed any claims disputing the seizure.
According to court documents obtained by Premium Times, the digital assets were traced back to three Binance accounts operated by the Nigerians. The assets were stolen in February 2021 from Matthew McNulty, a resident of Cleveland, Tennessee, through a phishing scheme orchestrated via a fake website hosted in Nigeria.
McNulty, seeking assistance after a cryptocurrency error, posted a query on a Telegram channel called AnySwap. He was contacted by an imposter posing as a Telegram community manager, who then directed him to enter his crypto wallet login details into a fraudulent website. The scammer requested that he screenshot a QR code generated by the site and send it back. Once McNulty complied, his crypto assets were immediately transferred out of his wallet.
FBI Special Agent Jordan Foreman, in a sworn affidavit, said the funds were laundered through several wallets, converted into multiple types of cryptocurrencies, and eventually landed in Binance accounts linked to the three Nigerians.
“The pattern of withdrawals, transfers, and transactions is consistent with money laundering and attempts to conceal proceeds of fraud,” Foreman stated.
The court concluded that the government had established a strong connection between the seized crypto and the criminal conduct, and since no defendant filed a claim, summary judgment was granted in favour of the U.S. government.
Efforts to notify the suspects — including through emails and public forfeiture notices on www.forfeiture.gov — yielded no response, further reinforcing the court’s decision to finalize the forfeiture order.
Binance, the exchange through which the funds were traced, has recently faced scrutiny from both U.S. and Nigerian authorities. In 2023, the Nigerian government detained two of its executives, one of whom escaped custody, while the other, Tigran Gambaryan, was detained and prosecuted before charges were dropped in October 2024.
The U.S. Department of Justice said the decentralized nature of cryptocurrency, coupled with the speed of transactions and global reach, has made it an ideal tool for cybercriminals. According to the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3), crypto-related fraud cost victims over $5.6 billion in 2023, marking a 45% increase from 2022.
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