Adebola Opeyemi Adeniyi, Stolen Identity Refund Fraud, Maryland 2017

Adebola Opeyemi Adeniyi, a Nigerian citizen living in Baltimore, has been sentenced to 42 months in prison for conspiring to commit wire fraud in a stolen identity refund fraud scheme. Adeniyi, 32, was sentenced by U.S. District Judge J. Frederick Motz on Monday, March 14, 2017.

According to his plea agreement, from October 17, 2013 through March 17, 2015, Adeniyi and his co-conspirators filed false tax returns, arranging for the electronic transfer of the fraudulently obtained tax refunds to prepaid debit cards. Adeniyi also obtained victims’ account information from the 2013 Target Store data breach, which he and other participants in the scheme used to re-encode the magnetic strips of payment cards in their possession.

Adeniyi and other participants used the debit cards loaded with SIRF funds and the re-encoded payment cards to purchase money orders, which the conspirators cashed at check cashing businesses. Adeniyi shared the cash proceeds with other participants in the scheme. The total value of money orders purchased with SIRF funds and cashed by Adeniyi or at his direction was at least $665,635.

The total value of money orders purchased with account information compromised during the Target Store data breach and cashed at Adeniyi’s direction was at least $80,500. At least $100,874 in SIRF funds were loaded onto prepaid debit cards for which co-conspirator Mayowa Towobola provided account numbers and security codes to Adeniyi and other participants in the scheme, and the total value of fraudulently obtained money orders cashed by Towobola was at least $58,524.

Adeniyi admitted that he used some of the money orders obtained from the two schemes to: purchase vehicles at auctions in Maryland, and arrange for their shipment to purchasers in Nigeria; and to engage in currency exchange transactions, exchanging U.S. currency for Nigerian currency at competitively low rates.

Co-conspirators Mayowa Olabiyi Towobola, age 26, a resident of Parkville, Maryland, and Hafis Omowonuola Oladokun, age 39, of Owings Mills, Maryland, previously pleaded guilty to their involvement in the wire fraud conspiracy and were sentenced to 33 months in prison, and two years in prison, respectively. Judge Motz also ordered Towobola to pay restitution of $159,398.

Adeniyi was also ordered to pay restitution of $550,000. This sentence is the result of an investigation by the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), the Internal Revenue Service – Criminal Investigation (IRS-CI), and the Baltimore County Police Department.

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