Nigerian man jailed in US over dividend fraud scheme

A Nigerian based in Pennsylvania, Adepoju Babatunde Salako, has been sentenced to 18 months in prison in the United States after pleading guilty to wire fraud linked to a 2022 Alaska Permanent Fund Dividend fraud scheme.

According to court documents, Salako fraudulently obtained the personal information of several Alaska residents and used it to submit seven fake applications for Permanent Fund Dividend payments between January and February 2022.

Investigators said he created email accounts linked to the victims and gained access to their “myAlaska” online profiles, where he altered contact and banking details to redirect payments to accounts under his control.

Authorities said Salako used a Virtual Private Network to disguise his location and make the applications appear to have originated from Alaska, although records later traced some activity to Philadelphia.

The Alaska Department of Revenue detected the fraud and rejected the applications before any payments were made. Officials said the scheme could have cost the state and victims nearly $23,000.

Salako pleaded guilty to seven counts of wire fraud. The sentence will run concurrently with a separate Colorado case in which he received six and a half years in prison over COVID-19 relief fraud and international money laundering offences involving $2.5 million in restitution.

Reacting to the case, U.S. Attorney Michael J. Heyman said, “Mr. Salako spent considerable time planning and perpetrating his scheme to defraud the Alaska PFD.

“Thanks to the great work of the Alaska Department of Revenue and FBI, he didn’t succeed; but even attempting to defraud the PFD will not be tolerated and could result in federal prison.”

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