For their parts in a fraud scheme during the COVID-19 pandemic, two Nigerian citizens, Quazeem Owolabi Adeyinka, 22, and Ayodeji Jonathan Sangode, 25, who currently reside in Maryland, have received sentences of 26 months and 14 months in prison, respectively.
Adeyinka admitted guilt to conspiring to commit wire fraud in November 2022, while Sangode admitted guilt to access device fraud in October 2022. Olamide Yusuf Bakare, 26, a third conspirator, also entered a guilty plea and was given a July 2023 prison term of four years and nine months.
Adeyinka, Sangode, Bakare, and others allegedly conspired to make false claims for unemployment insurance (UI) and pandemic unemployment assistance (PUA) to the State of California between June 2020 and July 2021, according to court records. The address listed on more than 200 individual applications submitted to the California Employment Development Department (EDD) was the flat the co-defendants rented in Hyattsville, Maryland.
The conspirators received the personally identifiable information (PII) of people who were either not eligible for UI or PUA benefits or who had not given them permission to act on their behalf in pursuing those benefits over the course of the conspiracy. Names, birthdates, and Social Security numbers comprised this PII. Following that, the conspirators submitted dozens of false UI and PUA claims to EDD using the supposed claimants’ names and without their consent.
False statements were made on the underlying benefit applications by the claimants, including that they had worked for specific employers and supervisors, had a certain annual income, had worked during a certain time period, were self-employed in a variety of occupations, had been fired and had no job, were recently out of work as a result of a disaster, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, and were currently available for employment. Because the claimants weren’t actually employed, unemployed, or looking for work, the majority of these claims were untrue.
Due to these acts, EDD approved false UI and PUA claims. For each accepted claim, EDD transferred benefit money onto a Bank of America-managed debit card account in the name of the alleged claimant. After that, Bank of America sent fraudulent debit cards by mail to addresses managed by the defendants.