ANCHORAGE, Alaska — A Nigerian national residing in Elkins Park, Pennsylvania, has been sentenced to 18 months in federal prison for orchestrating an identity theft scheme targeting Alaska’s state welfare program.
Adepoju Babatunde Salako, 33, pleaded guilty in an Anchorage federal court to seven counts of wire fraud. The sentence is ordered to run concurrently with a massive 78-month prison term he is already serving for running a multi-million-dollar international pandemic relief fraud and money laundering ring out of Colorado.
The Alaska PFD Exploitation
According to prosecutors from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Alaska, between January and February 2022, Salako harvested the Personal Identifying Information (PII) of legitimate Alaska residents. He used the stolen identities to hijack seven established accounts on “myAlaska”—the secure online portal state residents use to apply for the annual Permanent Fund Dividend (PFD).
Once inside the accounts, Salako altered the contact profiles to route state correspondence to email accounts he controlled and changed the electronic banking details to divert the funds to his own out-of-state bank accounts.
To mask his digital footprint, Salako deployed a Virtual Private Network (VPN) to spoof his location, making it appear as though six of the applications were filed within Alaska. However, digital anomalies flagged by the Alaska Department of Revenue (DOR) traced his actual location back to an IP address in Philadelphia.
The DOR’s Criminal Investigations Unit successfully intercepted and denied all seven fraudulent applications before any disbursements were made. Officials noted that each eligible Alaskan was due to receive $3,284 in 2022, meaning Salako’s localized scheme would have net him $22,988.
Remarking on Salako’s audacity, federal prosecutors noted that prior to arriving in the state for his sentencing hearing, the 33-year-old had never once lived in or even visited Alaska.
Link to a $5 Million International Syndicate
While the Alaska scheme yielded no payouts, it formed part of a sprawling web of cybercrime across the United States. Salako was previously targeted by a federal grand jury in Denver, Colorado, which exposed him as a central domestic operative for an international criminal organization based out of Nigeria.
Between 2020 and 2021, Salako and his West African co-conspirators weaponized more than 1,000 stolen or fake American identities sourced from data-mining platforms like TruthFinder. The syndicate successfully defrauded:
- The Small Business Administration’s Paycheck Protection Program (PPP).
- The Economic Injury Disaster Loan (EIDL) program.
- Unemployment insurance frameworks across more than 30 U.S. states.
In total, the network siphoned over $5 million from American taxpayers, with Salako personally ordered by a Colorado federal judge to pay $2,581,002 in criminal restitution.
Beyond corporate and government fraud, Salako also ran money-laundering operations utilizing romance scams. He trickled hundreds of thousands of dollars of stolen funds into the bank accounts of duped internet dating victims, directing them to withdraw cash, purchase money orders, and mail them back to his personal mobile phone business. From there, Salako funneled the laundered funds directly to accounts in Nigeria, China, and the United Arab Emirates in exchange for a 25% processing fee.
Law Enforcement Applauds Safeguards
U.S. Attorney Michael J. Heyman praised the synergy between local state reviewers and federal law enforcement that cut Salako’s Alaska run short.
”Mr. Salako spent considerable time planning and perpetrating his scheme to defraud the Alaska PFD. Thanks to the great work of the Alaska Department of Revenue and the FBI, he didn’t succeed; but even attempting to defraud the PFD will not be tolerated and could result in federal prison,” Heyman said.
Matthew Schlegel, the FBI Special Agent in Charge of the Anchorage Field Office, reiterated that modern protective safeguards are actively evolving to catch out-of-state identity thieves.
”The Alaska PFD program is intended to benefit current and future generations of eligible Alaskans, not criminals like Salako who seek to exploit the program through fraud and identity theft,” Schlegel stated.
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Salako remains in federal custody where he will serve out the remainder of his concurrent sentences.
