Air Peace CEO, Allen Onyema on the run from US fraud charges as his conspirator is convicted
Allen Onyema, the founder of Air Peace airline, is still wanted in the United States after his alleged conspirator in a $20 million bank fraud case was sentenced by an American court on Friday.
The US District Court for the Northern District of Georgia, in Atlanta, on Friday, sentenced Ebony Mayfield, an American woman, to three years probation for her roles in helping to facilitate the alleged fraud.
Under the probated sentence or supervised release, Ms Mayfield would be monitored for good behaviour by a probation officer for three years.
She escaped prison sentence because she pleaded guilty early before her trial began.
Her lawyer also anchored her plea for probated sentence on the grounds that she was remorseful and cooperated with the government during investigations.
The defence team also said she benefitted only little from the alleged fraud, with Ms Mayfield confessing that she received only a total of $20,000 for her roles in the alleged conspiracy between 2016 to 2018.
Mr Onyema maintained his innocence in a statement issued by his lawyers after Ms Mayfield’s sentencing on Friday.
Some Nigerian blogs and newspapers, that reported the press statement, claimed that the court acquitted Mr Onyema of all pending charges in its ruling on Ms Mayfield’s case.
But contrary to the false reports, Mr Onyema and Air Peace Limited’s Head of Administration and Finance, Ejiroghene Eghagha, still have a case comprising 36 charges pending against them at the same court.
While Ms Mayfield was battling with her trial, Messrs Onyema and Eghagha were on the run from the charges and arrest warrants.
US government named Messrs Onyema and Eghagha in the 36 charges of conspiracy, money laundering, bank fraud, credit application fraud, and identity theft filed against them on 19 November 2019.
American authorities have obtained court warrants for the arrest of the two men in the US and Canada, where part of the suspected proceeds of fraud was said to have been moved to.
Earlier, before the filing of the charges, Russell Vineyard, a magistrate at the United States District Court for the Northern District of Georgia, on 5 September 2019, issued a corresponding warrant of arrest for Messrs Onyema and Eghagha in Canada.
In another arrest warrant issued on 19 November 2019, Justin Anand, an American magistrate of the same court, ordered the US Marshals Service to take them into custody.
Both men have succeeded in evading arrest by American or Canadian authorities since then.
But US authorities arrested Ms Mayfield on 7 June 2019.
In December 2019, they charged her with signing and submitting fake documents to help Mr Onyema to facilitate the $20 million fraud between May 2016 and February 2018.
She pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit credit application fraud on 29 June, after she entered into a plea agreement that saw the US government drop seven other fraud charges against her.
US authorities accused Mr Onyema of moving suspicious funds from Nigeria to American bank accounts between 2017 and 2018 with the funds allegedly disguised as being meant to be used to purchase aircraft.
Mr Onyema and his co-defendant, Mr Eghagha, allegedly organised the fraud by applying for export letters of credit for the transfer of funds from a Nigerian bank account to the bank account of Mr Onyema’s Atlanta-Georgia-based firm, Springfield Aviation LLC, between 2016 and 2017.