Nigerian man sentenced to 8 years in prison for running phony tax refund scheme

A 37-year-old Nigerian man was sentenced to eight years in prison for participating in a five-year cybercrime spree to steal money from the U.S. government through fraudulent tax returns, the Justice Department said Wednesday.

Matthew Abiodun Akande was living in Mexico when he and at least four co-conspirators broke into the networks of tax preparation firms, stole sensitive data on their clients and filed fraudulent tax returns, claiming tax refunds with victims’ personal data, according to court records. 

Akande and his co-conspirators filed more than 1,000 fraudulent tax returns seeking more than $8.1 million in phony tax refunds during a five-year period ending in June 2021, prosecutors said. The crew collectively obtained more than $1.3 million in fraudulent tax refunds.

Officials said Akande also advanced the scheme by sending phishing emails to five Massachusetts-based tax preparation firms that were designed to trick employees into downloading remote access trojan malware, including Warzone RAT. Four of those firms were listed as victims in the indictment.

Akande has been in detention since he was arrested at Heathrow Airport in the United Kingdom in October 2024 and extradited to the United States in March 2025. A month later, Akande pleaded guilty to all 33 counts in the indictment prosecutors filed against him in July 2022.

His crimes include conspiracy to obtain unauthorized access to protected computers, wire fraud, unauthorized access to protected computers, theft of government money, and aggravated identity theft.

Akande and his alleged co-conspirators — Kehinde Hussein Oyetunji, a Nigerian national living in North Dakota, and two people that prosecutors declined to name — directed the fraudulent tax refunds to be deposited in U.S. bank accounts. Co-conspirators living in the United States withdrew some of the stolen money in cash then, at Akande’s direction, transferred a portion of the funds to third parties in Mexico, officials said.

In a sentencing memo submitted to the court, Akande’s lawyer insisted his client was not living an extravagant lifestyle in Mexico. Yet, he was ordered to pay almost $1.4 million in restitution as part of his sentencing.

You can read the full indictment below.