Nigerian, 56, Pleads Guilty To $12m Fraud In U.S

A 56-year-old Nigerian man, Kunle Sodipo Williams, has pleaded guilty to aggravated identity theft to the tune of $12 million in the United States.

Sodipo, a resident of St. Louis, Missouri in the U.S, also pleaded guilty to illegally re-entering into the country, as well as mail and voter fraud.

Offences leveled against him are theft of several return preparer’s Electronic Filing Identification Numbers (EFINs), illegal entry into the United States from Nigeria in 1999 after being deported in 1995, as well as registering to vote in federal, state and local elections in 2012 by faking his U.S citizenship.

According to Stuart M. Goldberg, Acting Deputy Assistant Attorney General of the Justice Department’s Tax Division and Acting U.S. Attorney Carrie Costantin for the Eastern District of Missouri, Sodipo admitted to the crimes and pleaded guilty in an Alabama Federal court.

Documents filed with court indicated that Sodipo and his accomplices made away with employees’ IDs of a public school.

He is said to have used the IDs to fraudulently file over 2,000 federal income taxes and sought more than $12 million in refunds.

The Nigerian is said to be facing “a maximum 20-year jail term for mail fraud, 10 years imprisonment for illegal reentry, five years in prison for each voter fraud count and a mandatory minimum sentence of two years in prison for aggravated identity theft.”

He has since been remanded in federal custody until his sentence on October 13 by Chief U.S. District Judge, Rodney W. Sippel.