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By Emmanuel Adeleke
A United States District Court in Western Tacoma, Washington State, has sentenced Abidemi Rufai, a suspended aide of Ogun State Governor, Dapo Abiodun, to five years in prison for $350,000 fraud.
Rufai was sentenced on Monday for wire fraud and aggravated identity theft.
With stolen identities, Rufai attempted to steal nearly $2.4 million from the United States Government, including $500,000 in pandemic-related unemployment benefits.
Rufai, 45, who pleaded guilty to the charges in May, was said to have succeeded in defrauding 12 US agencies of $600,000 paid out into bank accounts controlled by him.
Rufai was also said to have submitted fraudulent pandemic unemployment claims in at least 17 other states including Hawaii, Wyoming, Massachusetts, Montana, New York, and Pennsylvania.
In asking for a nearly six-year prison sentence, the Assistant United States Attorney, Cindy Chang, explained that Rufai’s scam hurt actual people who needed assistance.
“In this case, Rufai successfully used the stolen identities of at least 238 real individuals who qualified for disaster aid and may have needed it urgently. This number does not account for the number of stolen identities Rufai attempted to use but failed,” she said.
At the sentence hearing on Monday, the US District Judge, Benjamin H. Settle said: “The motivation was greed, unrestrained greed, and a callousness towards those who have suffered.”
Also, US Attorney, Nick Brown said: “Mr. Rufai was relentless in his scheme to use the stolen identities of Americans for fraud.
“He orchestrated ‘mystery shopper’ scams, business email compromise attempts, and filed fake tax returns to financially harm individuals and businesses. But when disaster struck, so did Mr. Rufai. Whether it was hurricane disaster relief, small business loans, or COVID unemployment benefits, he stole aid that should have gone to disaster victims in the United States.”
According to a statement by the US Department of Justice, Rufai “has agreed to pay full restitution of $604,260 to the defrauded agencies.”
The statement, however, added that “he has not fully cooperated with efforts to identify and forfeit assets that could be used for restitution.”
Rufai, who has been in custody since his arrest at JFK Airport, New York, in May 2021, admitted using stolen identities to claim hundreds of thousands of dollars in pandemic-related unemployment benefits.
He admitted a long history of using stolen identities to defraud U.S. disaster programmes, including aid for Hurricanes Harvey and Irma, and file fraudulent US tax returns.
Out of of the 12 agencies allegedly defrauded by Rufai, the Washington State Employment Security Department was said to have been hardest hit with $350,763 paid out by the agency as fraudulent pandemic unemployment claims to accounts controlled by the convict.
The prosecution says evidence to be produced at the hearing shows that Rufai “participated in the submission of fraudulent claims seeking in excess of $2 million in federally-funded unemployment assistance.”
He was said to have also “submitted claims to the IRS seeking more than 675 refunds totalling more than $1.7 million, and submitted at least 19 fraudulent Economic Injury Disaster Loan (EIDL) applications.”
He also, according to the prosecution, “submitted 49 fraudulent disaster claims to FEMA, and personally obtained proceeds from his wire fraud scheme.”