A Cameroon citizen who defrauded Municipal Trust and Savings Bank, Bourbonnais, Ill., of nearly $300,000 has been sentenced to serve 48 months in federal prison and ordered to pay restitution totaling $278,201 to the bank and other individual and business victims, according to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. (FDIC).
Lovette Namatinga, 34, of Owings Mills, Md., has been in custody of the U.S. Marshals Service since he was arrested Oct. 7, 2019, at Washington Dulles International Airport by FDIC Office of Inspector General (OIG) agents, according to a release circulated by the OIG office.
The release said Namatinga on Sept. 21 pleaded guilty to all counts of the indictment, four counts each of bank and wire fraud, as charged. Namatinga admitted that he carried out the fraud from about February to April 2019, it said, by falsely representing to the bank that the secretary of one of the bank’s customers requested that cashier’s checks be sent to Namatinga’s fraudulent company known as Keiko San Products Alimenticious, LLC. Namatinga is the registered agent for Keiko, and the four checks were mailed to his home address. The release notes that once the checks were deposited into Keiko bank accounts, Namatinga transferred the money to his personal account or withdrew cash from those accounts.
The release said Namatinga, through a business email compromise scam, also used his fraudulent business and multiple associated bank accounts to deposit and launder fraud proceeds from various other victims throughout the United States.
Cameroon Man Sentenced to Four Years in Prison for Defrauding Bourbonnais Bank, Others