A member of the philanthropic Sackler dynasty fell victim to cybercriminals who hacked into his email account in an attempt to steal more than £3 million.
Michael Daniel Sackler, a film producer, was targeted in January 2015 when fraudsters took control of his emails and made a string of bogus payment requests to his bank.
The thieves mocked-up false invoices with their own bank details, making three transfers totalling £1.3 million out of Mr Sackler’s account.
Attempts to withdraw a further £2 million from the account were blocked by the bank as suspected fraud.
The 32-year-old victim, who also founded investment firm Rooks Nest Ventures, is the son of Mortimer Sackler and his third wife Dame Theresa Sackler.
The Sackler dynasty made billions from the pharmaceutical industry and is world-renowned for its philanthropic gifts. Mortimer Sackler was known for lavish donations to the arts, including the Tate Gallery.
But the family have also been linked to the opioid scandal as they own Purdue Pharma, the US drug company that makes the highly addictive prescription painkiller OxyContin.
Five of the men behind the fraud on Mr Sackler were jailed at Southwark crown court for more than 19 years for the scam.
One of the ringleaders, Anthony Oshodi, 49, from Greenwich, went on the run a few weeks into the five-month trial and was convicted in his absence of fraud and money laundering charges. He was sentenced to six-and-a-half years.
Foyful Islam, 51, Mohammed Siddique, 32, Mohammed Rafeek, 34, and Meharoof Muttiyan, 35, were all convicted of money laundering and also jailed.
The Met’s Cyber Crime Unit investigated the fraud over the course of almost four years, tracking money taken from Mr Sackler’s bank account without his knowledge. They checked bank records, phone calls and computer data, and found messages between Oshodi and Siddique discussing the stolen money and between Siddique and Islam talking about laundering the profits and avoiding being caught.
Oshodi is said to have been directly involved in the hacking of Mr Sackler’s email account, and he was also caught with stolen cheques, including one written out for £51,000, stolen bank cards and copies of about 1,000 passports and bank cards on his computer. Muttiyan used the bank accounts of a petrol station, an insurance claims company and a computer business to hide the stolen money, the court heard.
Detective Constable Barry Steel said the investigation “uncovered a network of apparently legitimate businessmen involved in large-scale laundering of the proceeds of online criminality.
“Officers on this case spent years tracing the actions of this group in order to bring them before the courts. They trawled through thousands of pieces of evidence.”
Islam, from Poplar, was jailed for two-and-a-half years, Siddique, from Dagenham, got six years, Rafeek, of East Ham, got two-and-a-half years and Muttiyan, also of East Ham, was jailed for 20 months. They had all denied the charges against them.
