Nigerian, son convicted of $7m fraud in US

Emmanuel Oluwatosin Kazeem, a Nigerian accused of $7m fraud in the United States, has been convicted.

The 34-year-old was found guilty by a federal court in Oregon on  a 19 count-charge of mail and wire fraud and aggravated identity theft.

Michael Kazeem, his son, pleaded guilty to an indictment relating to the fraud and awaits sentencing.

A jury in Medford returned the verdicts on Thursday against Kazeem who lived in Bowie, Maryland.

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 are said to belong 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, prosecutors said.

Investigations showed that Kazeem passed many of the identities to his co-conspirators located in the Atlanta, Georgia area, and Nigeria. He instructed them on how to use the stolen personal information to get electronic filing PINs from the internal revenue service (IRS) in the taxpayers’ names to file tax returns.

Prosecutors also said he taught them how to create fictitious W-2 wage documents and acquire and register prepaid debit cards in the taxpayers’ names to receive refunds.

They submitted evidence that Kazeem had invested more than $190,000 in cash into the recent purchase of a newly constructed home in Maryland. He also used $175,000 in cash to buy a townhouse in Maryland shortly before his arrest.

Evidence also showed monthly credit card payments of $8,300 over four years and plans to build a hotel in Lagos, Nigeria.

The verdict came at the end of a five-day trial before Ann L. Aiken, a US district judge.

Kazeem is scheduled to be sentenced in Medford on November 8.

Investigators from the IRS, the US department of health and human services, the FBI and office of inspector general were involved in the case.