A federal court in Anchorage, Alaska, has sentenced 33-year-old Nigerian-American citizen Adepoju Salako to 18 months in federal prison for a sophisticated cyber scheme aimed at stealing more than $22,000 from Alaska’s state oil wealth dividend program.
Salako formally pleaded guilty to seven counts of wire fraud following a comprehensive multi-agency investigation.
Court documents released by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Alaska show that between January and February 2022, Salako illicitly acquired the personal identifying information (PII) of seven legitimate Alaska residents.
He used the stolen data to infiltrate the state's official "myAlaska" online portal, which residents use to apply for the annual Permanent Fund Dividend (PFD) paid out from Alaska's oil revenue savings.
Once inside the system, Salako altered the recovery email addresses on the accounts to routing profiles under his personal control and altered payment disbursement instructions to redirect the cash into his bank accounts.
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To evade detection, the fraudster deployed a Virtual Private Network (VPN) to mask his true physical location, successfully making six of the seven applications look as though they originated from an Alaska-based IP address.
However, the seventh application was traced back to his residential IP address in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, which investigators quickly matched to his personal electronic logins.
The Alaska Department of Revenue's internal fraud detection systems flagged the anomalies and denied all seven applications before any state funds were disbursed.
Had the scheme succeeded, Salako would have stolen exactly $22,988.
U.S. Attorney Michael Heyman commended the collaborative work of the state's revenue department and the FBI, noting that attempting to exploit public welfare programs will face zero tolerance.
Salako’s 18-month sentence will run concurrently with a separate six-and-a-half-year federal prison term handed down in Colorado over an unrelated international money laundering and COVID-19 relief fund fraud case, where he was ordered to pay $2.5 million in restitution.
#DiasporaCrime #WireFraud #FBIAnchorage #IdentityTheft #AlaskaPFD #FinancialCybercrime #JusticeDepartment
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