There’s been an arrest in the massive pandemic unemployment fraud against WA state
A man accused of stealing more than $350,000 in unemployment benefits from Washington state during the pandemic has been arrested and charged with wire fraud.
Abidemi Rufai, a 42-year-old of Lekki, Nigeria, was arrested Friday at JFK Airport, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office.
“Since the first fraud reports to our office in April 2020, we have worked diligently with a federal law enforcement team to track down the criminals who stole funds designated for pandemic relief,” Acting U.S. Attorney Tessa M. Gorman said in a press release. “This is the first, but will not be the last, significant arrest in our ongoing investigation of ESD fraud.”
The release gave this account of the allegations against Rufai, also known as Sandy Tang:
He filed fraudulent unemployment claims in Washington, Hawaii, Wyoming, Massachusetts, Montana, New York and Pennsylvania. He defrauded the Washington State Employment Security Department by using more than 100 stolen identities and had the funds sent to online accounts or through “money mules.”
Some funds were sent to a relative’s home in New York, and from March to August 2020 more than $288,000 was deposited into Rufai’s American bank account.
Rufai is expected to have a detention hearing Wednesday.
“Greed is a powerful motivator,” Donald Voiret, Special Agent in Charge FBI Seattle, said in the news release. “Unfortunately, the greed alleged to this defendant affects all taxpayers. The FBI and our partners will not stand idly by while individuals attempt to defraud programs meant to assist American workers and families suffering the consequences of the Covid-19 pandemic.”
A state Auditor’s Office investigation last year said that as of June 30 there were more than “122,000 known or suspected fraudulent claims in fiscal year 2020” that amounted to about $600 million, and that $250 million had been recovered. That figure wasn’t final, the report said, because the agency’s recovery efforts were ongoing.
The state saw a massive increase in unemployment claims in response to the pandemic, and had a significant backlog of claims.
“While ESD put a swift stop to the attack, preventing hundreds of millions in additional fraudulent payments, the added scrutiny and identity verification measures impacted the speed at which the department could work through the backlog of claims from earlier in the crisis,” the agency said in a press release last year.
This story was originally published May 17, 2021 at 12:02 PM with the headline "There’s been an arrest in the massive pandemic unemployment fraud against WA state."
