The United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency has arrested a previously convicted Nigerian, Rotimi Oladimeji, in an operation targeting illegal immigrants across the country.

The ICE, in a statement shared on its X page on Monday, disclosed that Oladimeji was ordered to pay $1.1 million in restitution before he was arrested.

The terse statement read, “Nigerian criminal alien Rotimi Oladimeji’s criminal history includes mail and wire fraud. He was ordered to pay $1.1M+ in restitution before ICE New Orleans arrested him.”

Oladimeji was sentenced to three years’ imprisonment by a US District Court in December 2023 for fraud.

He was convicted of aiding other scammers in Nigeria to defraud a woman “who thought she was in an online romance with a veterinarian and animal behaviourist living in St. Louis,” according to the US Department of Justice.

The US DoJ had, in 2022, added that “in October of 2019, Oladimeji claimed the veterinarian was going to Dubai, then said he wouldn’t be allowed to leave unless she sent money. They continued to request of the victim for four and five-figure sums, court records show.”

“In all, the victim lost nearly $1.17 million. Oladimeji received 20% of the funds he generated. As money mules who transmitted the fraudulent proceeds to people like Oladimeji, Akinrinmade and Adesanya received 20 per cent of the funds they forwarded. The remaining amount went to scammers in Nigeria,” it added.

Following his guilty plea in 2022, he was sentenced to three years’ imprisonment and ordered to pay $1.1m in restitution.

Similarly, Oladimeji was, at the time of his conviction, placed on deportation, but he has since remained in the US since completing his jail term.

Oladimeji’s arrest joined the thousands of illegal migrants who have been arrested by the ICE following President Donald Trump’s order on illegal and criminal migrant clampdown. (The PUNCH, but headline rejigged)

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