BY FRONTLINE REPORTERS
A United States court has sentenced a Nigerian man, Adepoju Salako, to one year and six months imprisonment for his involvement in an internet fraud scheme targeting Alaska’s Permanent Fund Dividend programme.
Salako, a 33-year-old resident of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, was convicted for orchestrating a wire fraud scheme aimed at defrauding the Alaska Department of Revenue through fraudulent dividend applications.
According to court documents, the offences were committed between January and February 2022.
The development was disclosed in a statement published on the website of the US Department of Justice on Friday.
The statement revealed that Salako fraudulently obtained the personal identification information of legitimate Alaska residents and used the details to submit multiple fake applications for Permanent Fund Dividend payments.
“Salako obtained the personal identifying information for legitimate Alaskan residents and submitted seven separate applications to the Alaska Department of Revenue to obtain their PFD funds,” the statement said.
Investigators further disclosed that Salako had never lived in Alaska and had not visited the state until he arrived there for sentencing.
According to the court filings, he created and controlled several email accounts linked to the identities of the victims in order to facilitate the fraud.
“Court documents detail that Salako created new email accounts that he controlled for each legitimate Alaska resident whose personal identifying information he fraudulently obtained,” the statement added.
Salako pleaded guilty to seven counts of wire fraud.
The court ordered that the 18-month prison term run concurrently with an earlier sentence connected to a separate COVID-19 relief fraud and international money laundering case in the District of Colorado.
In the Colorado case, Salako was sentenced to six and a half years imprisonment and ordered to pay $2.5 million in restitution to victims affected by the fraud scheme.
ADVERTISEMENTS
