Four Nigerians have been charged with conspiracy to commit wire fraud, filing false claims, theft of public money and property, and aggravated identity theft by a middle district court in Tampa, Florida, United States of America.

According to the information made available on the website of the US Department of Justice, Akinola Taylor, Olayemi Adafin and Olakunle Oyebanjo, three of the alleged fraudsters, were arrested in the United Kingdom by the metropolitan police in a coordinated operation between November 30 and December 1.

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Kazeem Olanrewaju Runsewe, the fourth accused person, was arrested in Malmo, Sweden, on November 30.

Indictment records showed that Taylor and Runsewe had obtained unauthorised access to United States businesses’ computer servers and stolen information of US residents from them.

The criminally obtained information was then used to file false and fraudulent Internal Revenue Service (IRS) forms and seek income tax refunds.

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On their part, Adafin and Oyebanjo have assisted in the collection of the fraudulently obtained proceeds and have transferred a respectable portion to the prepaid debit cards in their possession. Another portion of the proceeds was transferred to addresses and bank accounts they controlled.

The four men are already facing extradition proceedings in the countries of their arrest.

If convicted, each faces a maximum penalty of 20 years in federal prison for the wire fraud count and additional penalties for the other counts.