Daniel Santino, Agou Agou sentenced after defrauding Stilmark

Two cousins have been ordered to pay back more than $20,000 after scamming a Sydney telecommunications company into bolstering their accounts.

Guildford man Daniel Santino and his cousin Agou Garang Agou have been sentenced for taking $170,000 from Sydney telecommunications tower company Stilmark using a fraudulent account in an email scam.

The fraudsters started taking funds from Stilmark (now known as WaveConn) in September last year when an employee clicked on a phishing link in a work email.

Another email was sent later that month when the same worker received a compromised email from someone purporting to be from one of its suppliers, Kain Lawyers.

The email requested their bank details to be updated for payment of future and existing invoices into the dodgy Commonwealth Bank account.

The woman was deceived into transferring $177,748.05 to Agou, whose previous balance was just more than $450.

Over two days, he completed six transactions including a cash withdrawal and transfers more than $22,160 from the Commonwealth account.

Detectives arrested Daniel Santino on July 8. Picture: NSW Police

He transferred the funds to Santino who spent part of the money on Uber, Marleyspoon and Sofra Kebabs Granville.

Court documents reveal that Santino’s phone was seized by police on November 19, 2021, during an unrelated matter, when a series of text messages between him and Agou showed them discussing the scam.

On October 1, 2021 the bank contacted Agou after noticing suspicious activity to his account and locked access to online banking.

He provided his driver’s licence to a staff member.

Santino advised his cousin: “Alright sweet if it works cash out 30k yeh (sic) but if it doesn’t and they ask where the money came from say you don’t know … and delete all our message now”.

When a member of the bank digital fraud team called Agou, a recorded call asked where the $160,000 came from he responded he “didn’t know and that it came out of nowhere”.

He later admitted to sending $19,999 to his cousin as well as withdrawing $2000 from an ATM.

Police facts tendered to Parramatta Local Court say the exchanges show Santino coached his cousin about dispersing the funds. He instructed him to withdraw $30,000 cash and to continuously deny the cash.

Daniel Santino told police someone on Snapchat asked him if he wanted to make quick money.

Santino attended a bank branch on October 13 when a recorded telephone call revealed his cousin owed him the money and once he received it he gave it out to family.

On October 28, $155,589.54 was recovered from Agou’s Commonwealth Bank account and returned to the company.

State Crime Command Cybercrime Squad detectives arrested Santino at his home at Byron Rd, Guildford, in July.

He told police “someone added me on Snapchat and asked if I wanted to make quick legal money”.

He was charged with recklessly deal with proceeds of crime greater than $5000 and pleaded guilty to the offence less than a week after his arrest.

Court papers reveal Santino offended while he was serving a six-month correctional order for an unrelated matter.

Cops described the funds the pair received as “grossly disproportionate to their usual income”.

On October 5, the 23 year olds were sentenced at Parramatta Local Court.

Santino will serve an intensive correction order for 10 months. He must compensate WaveConn $20,000.

Agou was charged with recklessly deal with proceeds of crime greater than $5000.

He was convicted and sentenced to a community correction order for two years and 150 hours of community service.

He was ordered to compensate WaveConn $2167.57.

State Crime Command Cybercrime Squad detectives formed Strike Force Urban to investigate several fraudulent transactions resulting from cyber-enabled “invoice frauds” also known as business email compromise (BEC) scams.

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