SAN ANTONIO (Texas News Radio) — Eight people have been indicted in a fraudulent sweepstakes and income tax refund scheme, according to a federal grand jury indictment unsealed Wednesday.
Federal prosecutors say the scheme involved two people from Austin — 31-year-old Joel Calvin and 40-year-old Clarence Barefield — and one person from Mesquite — 54-year-old Donna Lundy.
The five others named in the indictment are 48-year-old Harry Cole, 41-year-old Emmanuel Ajayi, 47-year-old Tony Akinbobola, 31-year-old Bolaji Oyewole, and 54-year-old Akintola Akinmadeyemi. All five are Nigerian citizens who live in Canada, except for Akinmadeyemi, who lives in Indiana.
The indictment says Lundy sold over $700,000 worth of lists on elderly potential victims of the scheme to Cole at a price of $1 per name.
Cole and his Canadian conspirators — from 2012 to 2016 — sent packages containing fraudulent sweepstakes information to their American conspirators.
These packages contained thousands of mailers, which were sent to victims notifying them that they had won a sweepstakes.
Those mailers contained a fraudulent check issued in the name of the victim of about $8,000 and a pre-addressed envelope.
The victims were then instructed to deposit the check into their bank account and immediately withdraw between $5,000 to $7,000 in cash or money orders. They were told to send the money to a “sweepstakes representative” who would help the victim collect their prize.
By the time the victim was informed by the bank that the check was fraudulent, the cash and money orders would already be sent by the victims to the people accused in the crime.
The indictment says the intended loss from this scheme was $250 million. The actual loss from the scheme was more than $900,000.
The indictment also alleges from June 2015 through June 2016, Ajayi was involved in a connected scheme to file more than 1,200 fraudulent income tax returns using stolen personal identifying information, with the intention to receive $25 million in refunds.
Ajayi used bank accounts involved in the sweepstakes scheme to receive the refunds. That money was then funneled to American conspirators.
An IRS analysis determined the federal government lost $3.4 million to this fraud scheme.
The conspirators also operated a money laundering scheme in order to use the money they had fraudulently acquired. This conspiracy involved knowing and unknowing participants. The goal was to move the money from the sweepstakes scheme and the tax return scheme out the U.S. without detection.
Currently, the prosecutors say they are still looking for Ajayi and Oyewole, Lundy has agreed to turn herself in and the other defendants have been arrested.
All eight have been charged with conspiracy to commit wire fraud and conspiracy to commit money laundering. Ajayi faces additional charges of a second conspiracy to commit wire fraud count and aggravated identity theft. Lundy faces a count of wire fraud.
Aggravated identity theft calls for a mandatory two years in prison upon conviction. Each of the other charges call for up to 20 years in federal prison.