A Nigerian man by name Ayodele Arasokun has being charged by the United States federal court in West Virginia for the illicit role he played in an international conspiracy to defraud the US Government of $60 million by filing false tax returns. This was made known in a press statement from the US Attorney’s Office Northern District of West Virginia published on Friday.According to the statement, Arasokun was found guilty of 21 counts of wire fraud and aggravated identity theft by a jury as he orchestrated a scheme to file 1,701 false returns and claim $9.1 million in refunds.
West Virginians identitY was equally stolen in the process, according to the release. Ayodele Arasokun was in a location just outside of Paris, France at the time of the crimes, but the release did not indicate when they happened. A total of $2.2 million in fraudulent refunds were actually paid by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), the release said. The scheme involved compromising the Electronic Filing Pin application. Investigators determined Arasokun was tracking about 700 U.S.-based accounts containing more than $50 million, and during the trial, evidence revealed that he had the internal revenue service (IRS) transfer money to pre-paid debit cards or to checking accounts that he was monitoring.
