$1.3m cyber fraud: US court jails Nigerian eight years

A convict

A Nigerian man, Matthew A. Akande, has been sentenced to eight years in prison for orchestrating a cyber scheme that targeted tax preparation firms and defrauded the U.S. government of more than $1.3 million.

This was made known in a statement shared on the U.S Government website on Wednesday.

According to the statement, 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.

The statement said, “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. Punch