By Paul Joseph
A Nigerian man named Matthew A. Akande has been sentenced to eight years in prison for running a cyber scheme that targeted tax preparation companies and defrauded the U.S. government of over $1.3 million. This information was released in a statement on the U.S. Government’s website on Wednesday.
The statement revealed that Akande, 37, who had been residing in Mexico, received his sentence on Tuesday from U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani in a federal court in Boston. In addition to his prison term, he has been ordered to pay $1,393,230 in restitution and will undergo three years of supervised release following his incarceration.
The statement noted, “A Nigerian national living in Mexico, who was extradited to the United States, was sentenced yesterday in federal court in Boston for his involvement in a scheme to infiltrate the computer networks of tax preparation firms in Massachusetts and file fraudulent tax returns.”
Akande was arrested in October 2024 at Heathrow Airport in the UK at the request of U.S. authorities and was extradited on March 5, 2025. He had been indicted in July 2022 on several charges, including conspiracy, wire fraud, unauthorized computer access, theft of government funds, and aggravated identity theft.
In July 2022, a federal grand jury charged Akande with multiple offenses, including conspiracy to gain unauthorized access to protected computers for fraudulent purposes, theft of government funds, money laundering, wire fraud, unauthorized access to protected computers, theft of government money, and aggravated identity theft.
According to investigators, from June 2016 to June 2021, Akande and his associates used phishing emails and malicious software to breach the computer systems of tax preparation companies in Massachusetts. The phishing emails masqueraded as communications from potential clients, aiming to deceive recipients into installing remote-access trojan malware, specifically a program called Warzone RAT.
During this period, Akande collaborated with others to steal money from the U.S. government by using taxpayers’ personal identifiable information (PII) to file fraudulent tax returns under their names. The operation involved stealing PII from Massachusetts tax preparation firms through phishing attacks and computer breaches.
To execute the scheme, Akande orchestrated the sending of fraudulent phishing emails to five tax preparation firms in Massachusetts. These emails pretended to be from prospective clients seeking services but were actually designed to trick the firms into downloading remote access trojan malware, including Warzone RAT.
With the stolen information, the group accessed clients’ personal details and previous tax records, ultimately filing over 1,000 fraudulent tax returns that sought more than $8.1 million in refunds. Akande utilized the RAT malware to acquire the PII and prior tax information from the firms’ clients, which was then used to submit fraudulent tax returns requesting refunds.
The fraudulent tax returns instructed that the refunds be deposited into bank accounts opened by co-conspirators in the U.S. Once the refunds were issued, these co-conspirators withdrew the stolen funds in cash and transferred a portion to contacts in Mexico, following Akande’s instructions, while retaining some for themselves.
Prosecutors reported that over $1.3 million was successfully disbursed into accounts controlled by co-conspirators in the U.S., who withdrew the cash and sent part of it to contacts in Mexico at Akande’s direction. In total, Akande and his accomplices filed more than 1,000 fraudulent tax returns seeking over $8.1 million in refunds, successfully obtaining over $1.3 million in fraudulent refunds.
Leave a Reply