Nigerian Bags 8-yr Jail Over $1.3m Cyber Tax Fraud In US

A United States federal court has sentenced a Nigerian national, Matthew A. Akande, to eight-year imprisonment for masterminding a cyber fraud scheme that siphoned more than $1.3 million from the US government.

The sentence was announced in a statement published on the official US government website.

Akande, 37, who was living in Mexico before his arrest, was sentenced on Tuesday by Indira Talwani at a federal court in Boston. In addition to the jail term, the court ordered him to pay $1,393,230 in restitution and serve three years of supervised release after completing his sentence.

According to the statement, Akande was extradited to the United States for his role in hacking into the computer networks of tax preparation firms in Massachusetts and filing fraudulent tax returns.

Authorities said Akande was arrested in October 2024 at Heathrow Airport at the request of US officials and was extradited to the United States on March 5, 2025.

He had been indicted by a federal grand jury in July 2022 on multiple counts, including conspiracy, wire fraud, unauthorised access to protected computers, theft of government funds and aggravated identity theft.

Investigations revealed that between June 2016 and June 2021, Akande and his accomplices carried out phishing attacks against tax preparation firms in Massachusetts. The fraudulent emails were disguised as messages from prospective clients and were used to trick recipients into installing remote-access trojan malware, including Warzone RAT.

Using the malware, prosecutors said the group stole taxpayers’ personally identifiable information and prior-year tax records, which were then used to file more than 1,000 fraudulent tax returns seeking over $8.1 million in refunds.

The refunds were directed into bank accounts opened by co-conspirators in the United States. Once paid, the funds were withdrawn in cash and portions transferred to third parties in Mexico at Akande’s direction, while the remaining amounts were shared among the accomplices.

Although the scheme sought more than $8.1 million in fraudulent refunds, authorities said about $1.3 million was successfully paid out into accounts controlled by the conspirators.

“In total, Akande and his co-conspirators filed more than 1,000 fraudulent tax returns over approximately five years and successfully obtained over $1.3 million in fraudulent tax refunds,” the statement said.