A United States federal court has sentenced a 41-year-old Ghanaian man to seven years and one month in prison for his leading role in a transnational cybercrime syndicate responsible for defrauding victims of more than $100 million through online romance deception and business email fraud.
Derrick Van Yeboah, also known as “Van,” received an 85-month custodial sentence from U.S. District Judge Arun Subramanian on July 28, 2026, after earlier admitting to conspiracy to commit wire fraud.
He entered his guilty plea on March 5, 2026.
Announcing the sentence, U.S. Attorney Jay Clayton described the crimes as a deliberate exploitation of trust and human vulnerability, noting that the scheme preyed on victims’ emotions and legitimate commercial relationships for financial gain.
He said the punishment underscored the determination of U.S. authorities to dismantle international fraud networks targeting Americans.
Investigators established that Yeboah belonged to a Ghana-based criminal operation that relied primarily on two sophisticated schemes.
Members of the group cultivated fake online romantic relationships to persuade victims to send money, while others carried out business email compromise attacks by posing as company executives and convincing businesses to transfer funds into fraudulent accounts.
Court filings revealed that the syndicate targeted dozens of victims, many of them elderly individuals who believed they were in genuine online relationships.
The illicit proceeds, exceeding $100 million, were subsequently laundered through channels linked to West Africa.
Prosecutors attributed more than $10 million in losses directly to Yeboah.
Between 2019 and 2020, he allegedly used fabricated identities to deceive women from Ohio and Delaware into sending approximately $4.2 million to accounts controlled by the criminal network.
Authorities also cited another incident in 2024 in which Yeboah persuaded a man from North Carolina to send about $123,000 after falsely claiming he required financial assistance for a parent’s funeral and to retrieve gold and diamonds supposedly held in Italy.
Beyond the prison sentence, the court ordered Yeboah to serve two years under supervised release upon completion of his incarceration.
He was also directed to forfeit $10,149,429.17 linked to the fraudulent activities.
Yeboah was extradited from Ghana to the United States on August 7, 2025, through a joint operation involving the U.S. Department of Justice and several Ghanaian institutions, including the Office of the Attorney-General, the Economic and Organised Crime Office (EOCO), the Ghana Police Service’s INTERPOL Unit, the Cyber Security Authority, and the National Intelligence Bureau.
The prosecution was handled by the Complex Frauds and Cybercrime Unit of the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York.
By: Magdalene Agyeiwaa Sarpong