$350,000 fraud : Law should take its course on my special assistant arrested in America, says Governor Abiodun

Barely few hours after news filtered out over the arrest of Abidemi Rufai, a Special Assistant of Governor Dapo Abiodun, over alleged $350,000 (about N140 million) coronavirus unemployment fraud, the Ogun State Government has disassociated itself from the suspect.

Penpushing reports that, Rufai was arrested last Friday, at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York before boarding a flight to Amsterdam enroute Nigeia, and he is scheduled for a detention hearing Wednesday.

The Ogun State Governor in a swift response to the ugly development on Tuesday issued a statement through his Chief Press Secretary; Kunle Somorin who in a whassap response confirmed suspension of the embattled political appointee

“Our position is that the law should take its course. Meanwhile, the governor has ordered his immediate suspension from office to answer charges against him”, Somorin stated in his response

The arrested Nigerian said to be resident of Lekki in Lagos State, but served under the administration of Governor Abiodun was arraigned  on charges that he used the identities of more than 100 Washington residents to steal more than $350,000 in unemployment benefits from the Washington state Employment Security Department (ESD) during the coronavirus pandemic last year.

Penpushing further reports that, Acting United States of America (U.S). Attorney for the Western District of Washington, Tessa Gorman, in a statement Monday said “This is the first, but will not be the last, significant arrest in our ongoing investigation of ESD fraud,”

The federal complaint also provides a detailed glimpse into the scale of the pandemic-related fraud as well as the methods — some of them surprisingly unsophisticated — fraudsters used to pilfer unemployment systems in Washington and other states.

Penpushing also reports that, the 42 year old suspect, was arrested by FBI agents Friday evening and is scheduled for a detention hearing Wednesday, while the case will be prosecuted in federal court in Tacoma.

“I want to thank our partners in law enforcement for their continued efforts to hold criminals accountable for their attacks on our unemployment insurance system,”  Acting Commissioner Employment Security Department (ESD) Cami Feek said in a statement.

Penpushing reports that, the arrested Nigerian was on Saturday’s hearing represented by an assistant federal public defender  hearing, while his arrest comes almost a year to the day after ESD officials announced they were temporarily suspending benefits payments were  after discovering that criminals had used stolen Social Security numbers and other personal information to file bogus claims for federal and state unemployment benefits.

The suspect with nickname is Sandy Tang, is also suspected of defrauding unemployment programs in Hawaii, Maine, Michigan, Missouri, Montana, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Wyoming.

Penpushing further reports that, investigation also found a massive cache of tax returns and other personal data and evidence that Rufai was allegedly involved in numerous other fraud schemes, while federal officials acknowledged that Rufai’s presence in the United States probably was unusual in the unemployment fraud scheme.

The American authorities also offers a detailed explanation of how Rufai — and presumably others — allegedly bypassed security systems at ESD using a simple feature of Google’s free Gmail service.

Penpushing reports that the investigators initially identified Rufai through a single Gmail account he used to file 102 claims for pandemic-related unemployment benefits from ESD, as well as claims at programs in other states, according to the complaint.

The investigation revealed that, his original email address — [email protected] — was expanded to include dot variants such as [email protected] and [email protected], according to the federal complaint.

Penpushing also reports that, the suspect used the dot variant addresses to create multiple accounts in the Washington state system that authenticates users of government services, and was  alleged to then filed for unemployment benefits with ESD, the complaint, using stolen personal identities of real Washington residents.

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