… Prosecutors say he tried to defraud IRS of $1.6 million
There seems to be no respite in sight for Nigerian Abidemi Rufai who is facing a $350,000 fraud case in a US court.
Rufai, a senior aide to Ogun State Governor, Dapo Abiodun, was suspended by the governor soon after the news of his arrest in the US broke.
But while he is facing the battle to extricate himself from a long spell in a US prison, the US federal prosecutors has brought another charge against the 42-year-old politician, alleging that he also planned to steal from the Internal Revenue Service a sum of nearly $1.6 million.
It will be recalled that Abidemi Rufai was arrested in New York on May 14 while trying to travel to Nigeria.
He is accused of using stolen identities to take more than $350,000 from the Washington State Employment Security Department as it tried to rush unemployment benefits to people who lost work during the pandemic last year.
The prosecutors want to make sure that he remains in custody pending trial, saying he poses a severe flight risk, is facile with fake identities, and that he’s unlikely to ever be extradited if he makes it back to Nigeria.
On Friday, they filed a letter with U.S. District Judge, Benjamin Settle, to bolster that argument. It said that in the last few days, IRS criminal investigators have revealed that they have been investigating an email account associated with Rufai for years.
According to the IRS, the email account was used to file 652 fraudulent tax returns, seeking $1.6 million in refunds, from 2016 to 2019.
“The IRS rejected many of the filings, but accepted returns seeking approximately $900,000,” the letter said. “The IRS is calculating the amount of refunds actually paid out on these returns.”
