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Marco Ramirez, an American businessman, was on Tuesday sentenced to 74 years in jail over $1.6m fraud.
The Lagos State Special Offence Court slammed Ramirez with the sentence, after it found him guilty of the charges preferred against him by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC.
He was arraigned on a 12-count charge but later re-arraigned on a 16-count charge on June 24, 2022, before Mojisola Dada, the trial judge.
Ramirez was prosecuted alongside his companies, Eagle Ford Instalodge Group LP, USA NOW Energy Capital Group LP, and USA NOW LLC over a $1,235,000 EB-5 visa fraud.
He was also arraigned on another nine-count charge of $368,698.24 fraud.
He pleaded not guilty to all the charges.
Ramirez was accused of defrauding and collecting various sums of money from his victims as processing fees for their investments in his company, which would purportedly qualify them to be eligible for the issuance of a United States of America Green Card.
In her ruling, Justice Mojisola Dada found Ramirez guilty, saying the prosecution had successfully proved its case beyond reasonable doubt.
Consequently, she sentenced him to varying terms of imprisonment on the various offences he was charged with.
