Matthew Akande, a 37-year-old Nigerian, has been sentenced to eight years imprisonment by a United States court for stealing taxpayers’ information to obtain fraudulent tax refunds worth $1.3 million.
Indira Talwani, a US district court judge in Boston, sentenced Akande to eight years in prison, to be followed by three years of supervised release.
According a statement published by the US government, the judge ordered Akande to pay $1,393,230 in restitution.
THE CASE
In October 2024, Akande, a Mexico-based Nigerian, was arrested at the Heathrow Airport in the United Kingdom at the request of the US government and extradited to the US on March 5, 2025.
He was indicted for conspiracy to obtain unauthorised access to protected computers in furtherance of fraud and to commit theft of government money and money laundering; wire fraud; unauthorised access to protected computers in furtherance of fraud; theft of government money; and aggravated identity theft.
According to the US government, between June 2016 and June 2021, Akande worked with others to steal money from the country using taxpayers’ personally identifiable information (PII) to file fraudulent tax returns in taxpayers’ names.
The US government said the scheme “involved stealing taxpayers’ PII from Massachusetts tax preparation firms via phishing attacks and computer intrusions”.
Akande was said to have sent fraudulent phishing emails to five Massachusetts tax preparation firms.
“The emails purported to be from a prospective client seeking the tax preparation firms’ services but in truth were used to trick the firms into downloading remote access trojan malicious software (RAT malware), including malware known as Warzone RAT,” the US government said.
“Akande used the RAT malware to obtain the PII and prior year tax information of the tax preparation firms’ clients, which Akande then used to cause fraudulent tax returns to be filed seeking refunds.
“The tax returns directed that the fraudulent tax refunds be deposited in bank accounts opened by co-conspirators in the United States. Once the refunds were issued, those co-conspirators withdrew the stolen money in cash in the United States and then transferred a portion to third parties in Mexico, at Akande’s direction, while keeping a portion for themselves.
“In total, Akande and his co-conspirators filed more than 1,000 fraudulent tax returns seeking over $8.1 million in fraudulent tax refunds over approximately five years. They successfully obtained over $1.3 million in fraudulent tax refunds.”
