Nicolas Mondani Oleko, 32, from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, appeared in federal court on August 10 in North Dakota, for an arraignment on an indictment returned by a grand jury. The indictment charges one count of wire fraud and one count of bank fraud and alleges that Oleko participated in a business email compromise scheme that defrauded an auction house of $113,050.
One of the auction house’s clients was identified in court papers only as F.F., an 80-year-old man from Lookout Mountain, Tennessee. He passed away in October 2024. According to his obituary, F.F. was an international art dealer for more than 54 years.
The auction house sold objects including furniture, silver, and historical artifacts on December 18, 2023, and sent a settlement statement to F.F. at his email address on December 20, 2023. The same day, F.F. responded from the same email address requesting the auction house send a PDF of the settlement statement that could be electronically signed. The auction house provided a signable PDF and asked if F.F. could be paid by check.
Someone impersonating F.F. replied from an email address very similar to the one FF used but a little different—the letter “o” was replaced by the number “0.” The imposter F.F. stated that wire instructions were forwarded to the owner of the auction house.
On December 21, 2023, the auction house reached out to F.F. by email and asked to confirm the wire instructions because the routing number seemed to be incorrect. The imposter F.F. responded by email to correct the routing number and explained that he had given a routing number for ACH transactions instead of wires.
Based on the above instructions, the auction house wired $113,050 to F.F. on December 21, 2023. However, the account number that received the funds did not belong to F.F. but to Mondani, LLC, a business account associated with Oleko.
Wells Fargo reached out to the auction house’s bank for confirmation that the auction house’s bank had authorized the wire that had been deposited into the aforementioned bank account. After the communication from Wells Fargo, the auction house’s bank realized that the wire transfer request was fraudulent and attempted to recover the funds from Wells Fargo Bank.
The owner of the auction house called the FBI to report that his company was a victim of wire fraud and believed the email from one of his clients, F.F., had been compromised. The same day that $113,050 was deposited into the Mondani, LLC account, $112,240.80 was withdrawn from the account, mostly in even numbered amounts. For example, three transfers in the amounts of $40,000, $15,000, and $10,000 were all made to a personal checking account ending in 1060, belonging to Oleko and his wife.
Oleko was interviewed by the FBI in April 2024 at his apartment in Fargo, North Dakota. He admitted he owned a company called Mondani, LLC, and said that he never expected $113,000 to be wired into his account. Oleko claimed he asked Wells Fargo if he could spend the money that was deposited into his account. Oleko explained that he had financial problems and was dealing with debt collectors.
The United States Attorney’s Office urges all public and private entities to exercise vigilance to prevent business email compromise fraud. Entities are encouraged to establish strict payment protocols for large transactions and verify changes to vendor bank and routing information with trusted sources outside the chain of email communication.
Originally published in the October 2026 issue of Maine Antique Digest. © 2026 Maine Antique Digest
