As temps from hell go, officials say this one takes the cake — and whatever mother’s maiden names he can get his hands on.
Manhattan prosecutors say a 19-year-old Nigerian computer whiz stole the personal financial information of 150 fellow employees during a brief but busy three-month temping stint at Bank of New York Mellon back in 2001, authorities said today.
Since then, he has used the info to steal their identities, along with $1.1 million from an assortment of charities, according to an indictment announced today.
Adeniyi Adeyemi, now 27 — who lives in a one-bedroom in Brooklyn crowded with seven laptops and a packrat-worthy passel of paperwork — is due to plead not guilty this afternoon to charges of grand larceny, identity theft, money laundering and computer tampering.
Over the years, Adeyemi used the personal information he stole from his former fellow bank workers to set up bank and brokerage accounts in their names, said Manhattan DA Robert Morgenthau.
That way, Adeyemi could hide his real money-making scheme: Using the checking account and routing numbers many charities and non-profits carelessly post online to transfer small amounts of money out of the charities’ accounts and into the dummy accounts he set up in the names of his ID theft victims, Morgenthau said.
The victim charities include Goodwill Industries, and many more with much lower profiles, including Iris Ministries, the Kalgidhar Trust, the Sudanese American Community Development Organization, and the American Friends of Birdlife International.
He was only caught when he got greedy and decided to steal from his ID-theft victims directly — and investigators realized so many of them worked at Bank of New York, said Chief Assistant DA Mark Dwyer.
Investigators are hinting that Adeyemi worked as part of a ring, and may have used some of his stolen fortune to buy his way into a sham marriage that enabled him to stay in the US.
A bank spokesman Kevin Heine declined to comment on the case, except to say, “We strongly support the investigation and the actions taken by the DA’s office and are fully cooperating.”