‘He has been a prolific fraudster’ and four other revelations about Abidemi Rufai in court document exclusively obtained by Neusroom
“The choices we make are ultimately our responsibility,” Abidemi Rufai said in a quote on a design bearing his photo shared on his Instagram account that has now been made private.
The design has now been shared multiple times on the internet with captions trolling Rufai since the United State Department of Justice announced his arrest for being part of a fraud scheme that took $650 million from the coffers of the Washington State Employment Security Department (ESD).
What remains unclear is whether Rufai, an aide to Governor Dapo Abiodun of Ogun state before his suspension on Tuesday, is ready to take responsibility for his choice to be a significant participant in what may have been the largest fraud ever against the Washington state government, according to court papers the DoJ sent to Neusroom.
Rufai has multiple personalities. To some, he is a philanthropist, a realtor, a politician, while to others he is a businessman and a young man aspiring to represent the people of Ijebu Ode in the House of Representatives.
His old-time friend who spoke to Neusroom on condition of anonymity described Rufai as a philanthropist, saying “Ruffy was into real estate then and he has been working with Dapo Abiodun.”
But the U.S Department of Justice has a different portrait of Rufai, and it is a very disturbing one.
In court papers filed by prosecutors with the U.S Attorney’s Office for the Western District of Washington and sent to Neusroom late on Tuesday evening, here are five things the DoJ said about Rufai:
- Prosecutors claimed evidence developed in the investigation of his alleged crimes shows that Rufai is a prolific fraudster whose schemes have been ongoing for years.
- The DoJ said he is highly knowledgeable about obtaining and using large volumes of stolen personal identifiable information and tax and other financial documents.
- He is also a sophisticated user of payment systems and financial institutions to obfuscate financial transactions. Since at least 2017, Rufai has used these skills and knowledge to file disaster relief claims to the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and perpetrate schemes involving U.S. tax and business fraud.
- Authorities say Rufai’s fraud was a deliberate attempt to exploit, for his own gain, the COVID-19 tragedy which led to the loss of over half a million jobs in Washington in April 2020, tripling the state unemployment rate from just the month prior.
The flood of fraudulent claims filed by people like Rufai during this period, prosecutors said, caused ESD to delay payments to legitimate claimants during a time of extreme financial stress for many American workers.
- In its argument against Rufai’s request for release, prosecutors say he is likely to flee and the surrender of travel documents is inadequate to guarantee that he will not flee to Nigeria because he “could use his resources to purchase a fraudulent passport, or even slip over the border without one.” The DoJ backed this claim with an email Rufai allegedly sent to a certain Second Eye Solutions.
“For example, on October 18, 2018, Rufai emailed [email protected] and inquired, ‘what i mean is that can you do a master card which i will provide the details and u send me the picture front and back just like you do for drivers license’. Rufai’s email account also contains dozens of order confirmations from the same email address, showing payments in bitcoin,”
Second Eye Solutions is a Pakistani online store that produced and sold fake IDs and documents to fraudsters on the dark web. The website was shut down by the FBI in April 2021.
If Rufai had won election into the Nigerian House of Representatives, he would have joined the long list of known and unknown criminals elected into the National Assembly that many Nigerians say has a history of being a safe haven for fraudsters, certificate forgers, and drug peddlers.
Some of Nigeria’s Prominent Criminals in Politics
In 1999, the Speaker of Nigeria’s House of Representatives, Salisu Buhari, was forced to resign as Speaker and lawmaker for falsifying his age and forging a certificate. He had claimed he graduated from the University of Toronto.
In 2003, a second-term member of the House of Representatives, Morris Ibekwe, became the first lawmaker to be jailed for fraud after he was arrested and jailed for defrauding a German of $350,000.
Buruji Kashamu who was wanted in the U.S for heroin trafficking was elected as a Senator from Ogun state, and despite demands for his extradition, he was never extradited to the U.S. He died in August 2020.
Obiwanne Okeke aka Invictus Obi, the CEO of Invictus Group of Companies who posed as a businessman until he was arrested for fraud, told BBC Africa in a 2018 interview that he plans to run for political office. He has now been sentenced to 10 years in prison for his involvement in a computer-based intrusion fraud scheme that caused approximately $11 million in known losses to his victims.
On May 12, 2021, the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA) announced the arrest of Asekun Kehinde Sakiru, a former Vice Chairman of Lagos Island East Local Council Development Area (LCDA), with a kilogramme of cocaine concealed as he was trying to board a flight to London.
Sakiru had also contested and lost elections for the House of Representatives in 2007 and the Lagos State House of Assembly in 2015 under the APC. Those in the know say he was planning to recontest in 2023.
Nigerians argue that many others have slipped from the law to become celebrated politicians, doling out millions of naira to win elections.
Several posts on Rufai’s Instagram page seen by Neusroom before they were deleted show that Rufai was in the U.S during the pandemic. He also shared a photo of himself standing in front of the New York office of CNN.
After claiming unemployment benefits in May and through the period of the COVID-19 pandemic, Rufai, according to an American journalist Paul Roberts of the Seattle Times, left the U.S in August 2020 for Nigeria. That was around the same time he was appointed a Senior Special Assistant to Governor Abiodun. He apparently left the U.S to take up a political appointment with the Ogun state government.
Investigators say Rufai returned to the U.S in March. He was arrested on May 14 2021 while he was trying to leave the country.
He faces up to 30 years in prison if found guilty of the offense which the DoJ said relates to a presidentially-declared national emergency.
