FBI arrests Nigerian ‘tech queen’ over ‘multi-million dollar fraud’

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has arrested Sapphire Egemasi, a Nigerian tech enthusiast, over allegations of internet fraud.

She is reported to have been arrested on April 10, 2025, in Bronx, New York, in connection with a large-scale fraud scheme that allegedly targeted multiple US government agencies.

The suspect, alongside her co-conspirators, including one Samuel Kwadwo Osei, who appeared to have led the syndicate, risk potential prison sentence of over 20 years in the United States.

Authorities arrested the suspects following a 2024 federal grand jury indictment accusing them of orchestrating internet fraud and laundering funds between September 2021 and February 2023.

Egemasi and her Ghanaian co-defendants allegedly conspired to defraud the city of Kentucky of millions of dollars.

Her role involved designing spoof websites impersonating official US government domains to steal login credentials and facilitate the transfer of stolen funds.

Text message records show that in August 2022, the syndicate rerouted $965,000 stolen from Kentucky into a PNC Bank account.

In a separate transaction around the same time, $330,000 was funnelled into a Bank of America account.

Before her arrest, Egemasi was reportedly based in Cambridge, United Kingdom. Her work profile also shows that she previously lived and worked in Ghana.

Her LinkedIn shows that she has held multiple roles, mostly internships, at major multinational companies, including British Petroleum, H&M, and Zara.