NEW YORK—A British man has been criminally charged in New York with stealing money from investors’ accounts by hacking into email servers and computers belonging to U.S. banks and brokerages, causing more than $5 million of losses.
According to a 10-count complaint made public on Tuesday, Idris Dayo Mustapha, 32, and others used phishing and other means to obtain user names and passwords and access online bank and brokerage accounts from January 2011 to March 2018.
Prosecutors said the Lagos, Nigeria native and his co-conspirators at first transferred victims’ money to their own accounts.
They said once banks began blocking the transfers, the conspirators would make unauthorized stock trades in hacked accounts, while simultaneously making profitable trades in the same stocks in their own accounts.
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