![\"\"](\"https:\/\/nigeriastandardnewspaper.com\/a\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/06\/idris-two.jpeg\")
<\/a><\/p>\n\u201cDrizzle Lomo, presents himself publicly as living a lavish lifestyle, driving expensive cars and sporting flashy jewelry\u201d, prosecutors say.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n He was a club singer by night and an accused stock swindler by day. This London Afrobeat singer has been charged in the United States with allegedly breaking into unwitting victims\u2019 brokerage accounts and using their money to buy stocks in order to manipulate prices so he and his accomplices could profit off the price swings.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Mustapha is accused of running a wide variety of swindles dating back to 2011 when he was as young as 15, including romance scams, phishing schemes and complex stock frauds.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cThe defendant was part of a nefarious group that caused millions of dollars in losses to victims by engaging in a litany of cybercrimes, including widespread hacking, fraud, taking control of victims\u2019 securities brokerage accounts, and trading in the name of the victims,\u201d said Breon Peace, the U.S. attorney for the eastern district of New York.<\/span><\/p>\n Mustapha was arrested in London in August 2021, and is facing extradition to New York to face charges that were unsealed on Tuesday in federal court in Brooklyn. He had previously been hit with civil charges brought by the Securities and Exchange Commission in 2016.<\/span><\/p>\n Mustapha\u2019s lawyer didn\u2019t immediately return a call seeking comment.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Prosecutors said Mustapha presented himself publicly as living a lavish lifestyle, driving expensive cars and sporting flashy jewelry in videos for his music persona, Drizzle Lomo.<\/span><\/p>\n He was part of a Afrobeat group known as BTWBC, or the Built to Win Baller\u2019s Club. Afrobeat is a musical genre that combines elements of West African music with jazz, soul and funk. It is most popularly associated with the late Nigerian performer Fela Kuti.<\/span><\/p>\n According to an article in the Guardian newspaper in Nigeria about Mustapha\u2019s musical career, he studied at the University of Bradford in Yorkshire where he got a degree in information communication technology.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Mustapha is accused of using phishing scams to break into people\u2019s email to then determine the passwords to their brokerage accounts. Once he and his accomplices would gain access to their victim\u2019s account, they would begin making heavy trades in low-priced, lightly traded stocks-often for foreign medical device or drug companies-in order to drive up share prices.<\/span><\/p>\n He and his co-conspirators would separately control what prosecutors called \u201caggressor accounts\u201d through which they would buy, sell or short shares of the same company whose stocks they were manipulating, in order to make large profits.<\/span><\/p>\n By the time the victims would figure out what was happening, they and their banks would be stuck with losses that sometimes were as high as several hundred thousand dollars.<\/span><\/p>\n Sometimes, prosecutors say Mustapha would simply wire his victims\u2019 money to accounts he controlled, draining their accounts.<\/span><\/p>\n In all, prosecutors say Mustapha and his cohorts stole as much as $5 million through this and similar frauds.<\/span><\/p>\n He has been charged with money laundering, wire fraud, securities fraud and aggravated identity theft.<\/span><\/p>\n CERTAINLY, Good journalism costs a lot of money. Without doubt, only good journalism can ensure the possibility of a good society, an accountable democracy, and a transparent government. We are ready to hold every corrupt government accountable to the citizens.<\/b> To continually enjoy free access to the best investigative journalism in Nigeria, we are requesting of you to consider making a modest support to this noble endeavor.\u201d<\/b><\/p>\n Your donation is voluntary \u2014 please decide how much and how often you want to give. For offline donation, email: letters@nigeriastandardnewspaper.com or call +2348037128048 (Nigeria) or +16825834890 (United States of America)<\/b><\/p>\n [pff-paystack id=<\/b><\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" London SINGER at Night, SWINDLER by DAY:\u00a0 Nigerian flashy Afrobeat act, a Naturalized British citizen, IDRIS DAYO MUSTAPHA alias \u2018Drizzle Lomo\u2019 charged with STEALING $5Million from United States Traders \u2026 breaks into unsuspecting Americans\u2019 brokerage accounts, buy stocks to manipulate prices, profiting off on swings, facing extradition to New York *\u201cIdris Mustapha, a.k.a \u2018Drizzle Lomo\u2019, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":8710,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8709","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nigeriastandardnewspaper.com\/a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8709","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nigeriastandardnewspaper.com\/a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nigeriastandardnewspaper.com\/a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nigeriastandardnewspaper.com\/a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nigeriastandardnewspaper.com\/a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8709"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/nigeriastandardnewspaper.com\/a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8709\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nigeriastandardnewspaper.com\/a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8710"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nigeriastandardnewspaper.com\/a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8709"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nigeriastandardnewspaper.com\/a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8709"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nigeriastandardnewspaper.com\/a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8709"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}By contributing to NAIJA STANDARD NEWSPAPER, you are helping to sustain a journalism of relevance and ensuring it remains free and available to all without fear or favor.<\/b><\/h1>\n