A United States federal court has sentenced a Nigerian national, Matthew Akande, to eight years in prison for masterminding a cyber fraud scheme that defrauded the U.S. government of more than $1.3 million through fraudulent tax filings.
Akande, 37, was sentenced on Tuesday by U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani in Boston, according to a statement published on the U.S. government’s website.
In addition to the prison term, he was ordered to pay $1,393,230 in restitution and will serve three years of supervised release upon completion of his sentence.
The statement read in part: “A Nigerian national living in Mexico, who was extradited to the United States, was sentenced yesterday in federal court in Boston for his role in a scheme to break into Massachusetts tax preparation firms’ computer networks and to file fraudulent tax returns.”
Authorities said Akande was arrested in October 2024 at Heathrow Airport in the United Kingdom at the request of U.S. officials and was extradited to the United States on March 5, 2025.
He had earlier been indicted by a federal grand jury in July 2022 on multiple charges, including conspiracy, wire fraud, unauthorized access to protected computers, theft of government funds and aggravated identity theft.
Prosecutors revealed that between June 2016 and June 2021, Akande and his accomplices carried out phishing attacks targeting tax preparation firms in Massachusetts.
The fraudulent emails, disguised as inquiries from prospective clients, were designed to trick recipients into installing remote-access trojan malware, including a program known as Warzone RAT.
According to the statement, “Akande worked with others to steal money from the United States government using taxpayers’ personally identifiable information (PII) to file fraudulent tax returns in the taxpayers’ names.”
Investigators said the malware enabled the group to access clients’ personal information and prior-year tax records.
Using the stolen data, they filed more than 1,000 fraudulent tax returns seeking over $8.1 million in refunds.
The refunds were directed to bank accounts opened by co-conspirators in the United States, who withdrew the funds in cash and transferred a portion to third parties in Mexico at Akande’s direction.
“In total, Akande and his coconspirators 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,” the statement added.
US court sentences Nigerian to eight years for $1.3m tax fraud scheme
