A Nigerian man, Matthew A. Akande, has been sentenced to eight years in prison by a United States federal court for orchestrating a cyber scheme that targeted tax preparation firms and defrauded the government of over $1.3 million.
In a statement shared on the U.S. government website on Wednesday, authorities said Akande, 37, who had been living in Mexico, received the sentence on Tuesday in a federal court in Boston from U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani.
He was also ordered to pay $1,393,230 in restitution and will serve three years of supervised release after his prison term.
“Matthew A. Akande, 37, was sentenced by U.S. District Court Judge Indira Talwani to eight years in prison, to be followed by three years of supervised release. Akande was also ordered to pay $1,393,230 in restitution,” the statement read.
Akande was arrested in October 2024 at Heathrow Airport in the United Kingdom at the request of U.S. officials and extradited on March 5, 2025. He had been indicted in July 2022 on multiple charges, including conspiracy, wire fraud, unauthorized computer access, theft of government funds, and aggravated identity theft.
According to investigators, between June 2016 and June 2021, Akande and his accomplices used phishing emails and malicious software to infiltrate computer systems belonging to tax preparation firms in Massachusetts. The emails posed as messages from prospective clients but were designed to trick recipients into installing remote-access trojan malware, including a program known as Warzone RAT.
Using stolen data, the group obtained clients’ personal information and prior-year tax records, then filed more than 1,000 fraudulent tax returns seeking over $8.1 million in refunds.
“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.
Prosecutors said the fraudulent refunds were deposited into bank accounts opened by coconspirators in the United States, who withdrew the cash and forwarded a portion to contacts in Mexico at Akande’s direction.
