A court document has detailed 12 agencies of the United States government defrauded by Abidemi Rufai, a suspended aide of Governor Dapo Abiodun of Ogun State.
The document, obtained by PREMIUM TIMES, is an application filed by the US government at the District Court of Western Tacoma in Washington to seek the forfeiture of proceeds of the fraud.
This newspaper reported that the fraud proceeds amounted to over $600,000.
Mr Rufai, who has been in custody since his arrest at New York’s JFK airport in May 2021, pleaded guilty to the charges in May. At the time of his arrest, Mr Rufai was a Special Assistant to the Governor of Nigeria’s Ogun State.
In the plea bargain agreement he entered into with US prosecutors, Mr Rufai admitted using stolen identities to claim hundreds of thousands of dollars in pandemic-related unemployment benefits.
According to the plea agreement, since 2017, Mr Rufai unlawfully obtained the personal identifying information of more than 20,000…
