A 45-year-old resident of Lekki in Lagos, Mr Abidemi Rufai, on Tuesday pleaded guilty to wire fraud and aggravated identity theft in the United States, authorities have said,
Rufai who has been in custody since he was apprehended at New York’s JFK airport in May 2021, was the Special Assistant to Governor Dapo Abiodun of Ogun State, at the time of his arrest.
Days after the report of his arrest emerged, Governor Abiodun suspended Rufai from office to answer for the charges against him.
About a year later, Rufai pleaded guilty to using stolen identities to claim hundreds of thousands of dollars in pandemic-related unemployment benefits during his arraignment at the U.S. District Court in Tacoma, U.S. Attorney Nick Brown announced.
According to the plea agreement, since 2017, Rufai unlawfully obtained the personal identifying information of more than 20,000 Americans to submit more than $2 million in claims for federally funded benefits under a variety of relief programmes while the various agencies involved paid out more than $600,000.
“The largest amount of fraud was committed against the Washington State Employment Security Department, which paid out $350,763 in fraudulent pandemic unemployment claims to accounts controlled by Rufai,” said a statement from the U.S. Department of Justice. “Rufai also submitted fraudulent pandemic unemployment claims in at least 17 other states.
“Rufai also defrauded the Small Business Administration (SBA) by attempting to obtain Economic Injury Disaster Loans (EIDL) tied to the COVID-19 pandemic. Between April 8, 2020, and June 26, 2020, he submitted 19 fraudulent EIDL applications. SBA paid out $10,000 based on the applications.”
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