A U.S. court on Thursday sentenced a Nigerian, Nosa Edokpaigbe, to five years in prison for $1.4 million COVID-19-related wire fraud and will be deported to his home country after serving his jail term.

The United States Attorney’s Office for the District of Colorado, the Department of Justice, in a statement, said Mr Edokpaigbe was handed a 60-month imprisonment.

Mr Edokpaigbe, who pleaded guilty to one count of wire fraud, was also ordered to pay $1,408,897.16 in restitution and forfeit a money judgment totaling $681,694.

Mr Edokpaigbe fraudulently cornered $1,389,713 in EIDL and PPP loan payments, the majority of which was deposited into bank accounts he opened using false identities.  

He also submitted one fraudulent EIDL in his own name and filed hundreds of fraudulent tax returns using personal identifying information belonging to other real individuals. 

“While others were struggling to make ends meet during the COVID-19 pandemic, Nosa Edokpaigbe saw the national emergency as an opportunity to fleece American taxpayers out of almost $1.4 million.

“His shameless exploitation of relief programmes which were supposed to be a lifeline for people in need has earned him several years in federal prison and a one-way trip back to Nigeria,” said U.S. attorney Peter McNeilly.

According to court documents containing the plea agreement Mr Edokpaigbe entered with U.S. authorities, from around July 2020 and until around May 2021, Mr Edokpaigbe prepared and submitted hundreds of fraudulent Economic Injury Disaster Loan and Paycheck Protection Programme applications on behalf of fictitious business entities using personal identifying information belonging to other real individuals.

To conceal his involvement in the fraud, Mr Edokpaigbe signed loan agreements in other names, created fabricated documents for the fictitious entities, used a wireless hotspot to conceal his online activity, and used AI-generated images and images of mannequins to bypass the lenders’ identity verification procedures. 

The hotspot was seized from the defendant’s residence at the time of his arrest in October 2023.

Mr Edokpaigbe has joined an infamous list of Nigerians who have wreaked havoc abroad by defrauding people and organisations.