A sixth Nigerian citizen will serve prison for his role in a\u00a0tax fraud\u00a0case that cost the government more than $11 million.<\/p>\n
Oluwole Oluwaseun Odunowo, 37, of Houston, Texas, was sentenced Tuesday in\u00a0U.S. District Court\u00a0in Medford to 4-1\/2 years in prison for\u00a0mail fraud\u00a0and aggravated theft for his role in an elaborate scheme to use a cache of stolen identities \u2014 largely belonging to Oregonians \u2014 to file false\u00a0tax returns\u00a0in the victims\u2019 names, intercept their\u00a0Internal Revenue Service\u00a0refunds onto\u00a0prepaid debit cards\u00a0then wire the money to Nigeria.<\/p>\n
Odunowo\u2019s sentence marks the apparent end to an investigation that U.S. Attorney for the District of Oregon Billy Williams in 2018 called \u201cone of the largest\u00a0tax fraud\u00a0schemes in our nation\u2019s history.\u201d<\/p>\n
After seven arrests and convictions over seven years, only one suspect in the case remains, Adebiyi Oduneye, who lives in Nigeria and was never apprehended.<\/p>\n
The massive\u00a0tax fraud\u00a0investigation began in May 2013 with a Medford woman who reported to the IRS that someone had filed federal and Oregon\u00a0tax returns\u00a0in the names of her and her husband. The fraudsters used their actual names, birth dates and\u00a0Social Security numbers\u00a0but falsified other information to maximize the refund and intercept the payments onto GreenDot\u00a0prepaid debit cards, according to a press release issued by the U.S. Attorney\u2019s Office.<\/p>\n
Ringleader Emmanuel Kazeem of Bowie, Maryland, is serving a 15-year prison sentence for the tax scheme, which ran from 2012 to 2015 and ultimately involved more than 259,000 stolen identities \u2014 including 91,000 identities from Oregonians that a Vietnamese hacker stole from a Lincoln City employment services company. Kazeem and five others used the stolen identities to file 10,139 fraudulent\u00a0tax returns\u00a0accepted by the IRS. The ring attempted to obtain more than $91 million in tax refunds, and actually obtained $11,646,163 from the government.<\/p>\n
Kazeem\u2019s brother, Michael Oluwasegun Kazeem, along with Lateef Aina Animawun, Oluwatobi Reuben Dehinbo, Oluwaseunara Temitope Osanyinbi and Oluwamuyiwa Abolad Olawoye have all been sentenced to prison. A seventh subject, Curtis S. Pethley, who was arrested in Illinois and later relocated to Madison, Wisconsin, was sentenced last year to 33 months in prison for his role purchasing\u00a0prepaid debit cards\u00a0for the ring \u2014 reportedly at the request of a contact he met through a dating site Pethley knew only by the name \u201cqueen_jenn,\u201d and was actually a fraudster\u2019s brother living in Lagos, Nigeria.<\/p>\n
Odunowo used 700 of the stolen identities to file fraudulent\u00a0tax returns\u00a0in the ring, attempting to obtain more than $1.5 million and actually getting $402,846 from the IRS, according to\u00a0court documents\u00a0filed last month by assistant U.S. Attorneys Byron Chatfield and Gavin Bruce.<\/p>\n
U.S. District Judge Ann Aiken sentenced Odunowo Tuesday to 54 months in prison, and ordered that he repay $402,846 in restitution.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A sixth Nigerian citizen will serve prison for his role in a\u00a0tax fraud\u00a0case that cost the government more than $11 million. Oluwole Oluwaseun Odunowo, 37, of Houston, Texas, was sentenced Tuesday in\u00a0U.S. District Court\u00a0in Medford to 4-1\/2 years in prison for\u00a0mail fraud\u00a0and aggravated theft for his role in an elaborate scheme to use a cache of stolen identities \u2014 largely belonging to Oregonians \u2014 to file false\u00a0tax returns\u00a0in the victims\u2019 names, intercept their\u00a0Internal Revenue Service\u00a0refunds onto\u00a0prepaid debit cards\u00a0then wire the money to Nigeria. Odunowo\u2019s sentence marks the apparent end to an investigation that U.S. Attorney for the District of Oregon […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3153,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[58],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"\n