A US court on Friday sentenced a confessed co-conspirator in the alleged $20 million fraud allegedly organized by Air Peace CEO Allen Onyema to three years’ probation.
The court also awarded a $4,000 fine to Ebony Mayfiled, who pleaded guilty in June to one count of signing and presenting false documents to facilitate the alleged fraud.
The US government accused her of signing and sending false documents between 2016 and 2018 to help Onyema, owner of Air Peace, a major Nigerian commercial airline, move $20 million from Nigeria in a money laundering scheme. .
She was indicted in 2019 and initially pleaded “not guilty” to all eight counts in the District Court for the Northern District of Georgia in Atlanta.
But he pleaded guilty to one of the charges in June, after reaching a plea deal in which the US government dropped the remaining seven charges against him.
The law under which she was charged provided for a maximum sentence of five years’ imprisonment for the offense to which she pleaded guilty.
Following his guilty plea, his attorney filed for a sentence modification on October 13 to ask that he be given probation, or what is called supervised release, instead of prison.
PREMIUM TIMES reported Friday that the US government, in its response, agreed to a lower sentence limit that should include home detention for six months.
At sentencing on Friday, the judge, Mr. Ross, after discussing the pre-sentencing briefing with counsel for the parties and hearing briefly from Ms. Mayfield, imposed “a total of THREE (3) YEARS of conditional freedom”.
The judge also imposed a “$4,000 fine (interest is forgiven); $100 special appraisal; and additional requirements.
The judge granted her limited appeal rights and noted that she was set on bond.
‘Supervised release’
The court’s decision is a grant to the defendant’s request for probation or what her attorney called parole.
Defense lawyer Manubir Arora said that “imprisonment is not the only form of punishment” and stressed that “parole alone is a viable alternative form of punishment.”
Under probation, Ms. Mayfield’s lawyers said, her travel would be restricted and her associations would be regulated.
She would also be subject to random searches of her person and premises and subject to other special conditions, such as house arrest and intermittent confinement.
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