A 42-year-old Nigerian, Abidemi Rufai aka Sandy Tang has been arrested in New York over his attempt on wire fraud to steal $350,000 allocated funds of pandemic unemployment benefits from the Washington State Employment Security Department.
Rufai is not just an ordinary Nigerian citizen, but one who occupies a political position. He is currently the Senior Special Assistant to Ogun State governor, Dapo Abiodun. His first appearance before the Acting U.S. Attorney Tessa M. Gorman was on the 15th of May 2021 and has a detention hearing fixed today, 19th of May, 2021.
According to the complaints, Rufai is in the custody of over 100 stolen ID cards of Washington citizens, with a foul intention of claiming their pandemic-related unemployment benefits. He operates by using different single email addresses to avoid any cause for alarm from automatic detection fraud systems. Findings also gathered that he had also created clear channels to steal unemployment benefits in Hawaii, Wyoming, Massachusetts, Montana, New York, and Pennsylvania.
Alerts of similar fraud cases have been reported in Washington as confirmed by the Acting U.S. Attorney Gorman who said; “Since the first fraud reports to our office in April 2020, we have worked diligently with a federal law enforcement team to track down the criminals who stole funds designated for pandemic relief. This is the first, but will not be the last, significant arrest in our ongoing investigation of ESD fraud.”
Before he was caught, Rufai had already distributed the funds for cash out to some online payment accounts like ‘Green Dot’ and bank accounts under ‘money mules’. He also sent some to two of his relatives residing in the UK and Jamaica. Between March and August 2020, there were also traces of over $288,000 deposited by Rufai into an American bank account.
Rufai, if proven guilty will be spending 30 years in jail, a stipulated number for crimes committed in connection to a presidentially declared disaster or emergency. The cases against him are being prosecuted by Assistant United States Attorneys Seth Wilkinson, Cindy Chang, and Benjamin Diggs of the Western District of Washington, and Trial Attorney Jane Lee of the Department of Justice (DOJ’s) Cyber Crime and Intellectual Property Section (CCIPS).
