Fraud tagged interest

A 36-year-old Houston resident has been ordered to federal prison following his convictions of bank and wire fraud in two separate cases, announced U.S. Attorney Jennifer B. Lowery.

Julius Joachim Ohumole pleaded guilty Nov. 12, 2021. 

Today, U.S. District Judge Hughes ordered he serve a total of 97 months in federal prison to be immediately followed by five years of supervised release.

At the time of his plea, Ohumole admitted he defrauded Regions Bank of over $1 million. Specifically, he opened a bank account in the name of Mars Construction using false identification documents identifying himself as Kenneth Davis.

Later, he accompanied another individual to Regions who used false identification documents to represent himself as a Regions accountholder. Ohumole asked for this person to be a co-signer on the Mars account, thereby allowing it to be linked to the real person’s account. 

In January 2019, Ohumole caused $274,000 to be transferred from that account to the Mars account without permission or authorization. He then wired $273,000 to a bank account in New York and subsequently out of the United States.

In a separate case, Ohumole also defrauded the Teton School District in Idaho. In December 2018, he sent an email falsely representing to be from a construction contractor. In it, he claimed payments should be made to a new bank account. 

Ohumole admitted in his plea that this new bank account had nothing to do with the real construction contractor and was actually his Comerica Bank account in Houston. 

As a result of his scheme, the Teton School District sent $784,883.71 to Ohumole via his bank account. 

He has been and will remain in custody pending transfer to a U.S. Bureau of Prisons facility to be determined in the near future. 

The FBI conducted the investigation. Assistant U.S. Attorney John Braddock is prosecuting the case. 

 

February 16, 2022