A Nigerian man, Emmanuel Oluwatosin Kazeem, accused
of obtaining more than 125,000 stolen taxpayer identities from across
the United States has been convicted in a federal court in Oregon.
He
was found guilty on 19 counts of mail and wire fraud, aggravated
identity theft and conspiracy to commit mail and wire fraud.
Prosecutors say Kazeem bought over 91,000 of the identities from a
Vietnamese hacker who got into a database belonging to an Oregon company
called CICS Employment Services. Most of the personal information
belonged to people living in Oregon and Washington and were used to file
fraudulent tax returns between 2012 and 2015.
Over 2,800 fraudulent returns were linked to Kazeem with attempted
refunds in excess of $26 million and actual losses to the federal
government of nearly $7 million. IRS criminal investigators traced more
than 2,000 wire transfers involving $2.1 million dollars in fraudulent
tax refunds wired to Nigeria by Kazeem and his co-conspirators.
Kazeem taught them how to create fictitious W-2 wage documents and
acquire and register prepaid debit cards in the taxpayers’ names to
receive refunds, prosecutors said. as they submitted evidence that
Kazeem had invested more than $190,000 in cash into the recent purchase
of a newly constructed home in Maryland, used $175,000 in cash to buy a
townhouse in Maryland shortly before his arrest.
Evidence also found monthly credit card payments of $8300 over 4
years and plans to build a hotel in Lagos, Nigeria. The verdict came at
the end of a five-day trial before U.S. District Judge Ann L. Aiken.
Kazeem is scheduled to be sentenced in Medford on November 8.
Investigators from the IRS, the U.S. Department of Health and Human
Services, the FBI and Office of Inspector General were involved in the
case.
1 comment:
Very shameful
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