Woburn Newspaper Deliveryman Pleads Guilty to Stealing Customer Identities, Forging More Than $200k in Counterfeit Checks
WOBURN– Middlesex District Attorney Marian Ryan announced today that a Reading man has pled guilty in connection with an identity fraud and larceny scheme that involved counterfeited checks, compromised personal bank accounts and fraudulent tax returns falsely claiming refunds worth hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Ikponmwosa Ogiugo, 23, pled guilty in Middlesex Superior Court to charges including larceny over $250, larceny on a person over 60 years of age, forging and uttering counterfeit checks, filing fraudulent tax returns, money laundering, identity fraud and being a common and notorious thief.
Middlesex Superior Court Judge Kathe Tuttman sentenced the defendant to four years in prison, with three years probation consecutive to the active sentence and the condition that if he is deported it would be a violation of probation to illegally re-enter the U.S.
“This scheme used confidential banking information taken from older newspaper delivery subscribers to create counterfeit checks and steal their money,” District Attorney Ryan said. “More than a dozen people tipped their delivery person by check only to discover money was being stolen from their bank accounts. Some people endured a series of different financial losses and charges. We recognize the investigators from local, state and federal agencies who traced and stopped illegal activity that involved victims, and his cohorts, throughout the U.S. and as far away as India and Nigeria.”
Woburn Police detectives began an investigation in December 2012 after receiving complaints from some of the defendant’s delivery customers who noticed that unauthorized checks were being passed through their bank accounts. Personal and bank account information from those customers were used to create counterfeit checks totaling more than $240,000, drawn on their bank accounts. Over thirty subscribers on his route later discovered that their personal data had been compromised and fictitious tax returns had been filed in their names, with refunds to be wired to Ogiugo using debit card accounts he had opened in their names.
The defendant also incorporated bank routing information and individual bank account numbers into new computer-generated blank checks. With the personal information from tip checks, he would also search online for additional identifying information, including social security numbers and birth dates to establish fraudulent accounts.
Counterfeit checks were sent to individuals residing outside of Massachusetts, and were deposited in accounts in New Jersey, New York, Florida, Alabama, Texas, California and Washington State. It is believed that some payees of the counterfeit checks were duped into believing the checks were legitimate and, at the defendant’s urging, deposited them in their own personal bank account and then forwarded the proceeds via Western Union to recipients that Ogiugo designated, residing in India and Nigeria.
In several instances, when victims learned that unauthorized checks were being submitted against their account, they would close that account and open a new one. Unaware of the defendant’s involvement at that time, they would then issue a substitute gratuity check to the defendant after the old account had been closed. Victims who closed accounts and opened new ones were hit a second time if they again paid a gratuity from the new account. In this way, the defendant was in a position to create, and did create, more new counterfeit checks off the newly established accounts.
In addition to creating fraudulent accounts with customers’ personal banking information, the defendant also used that personal information to file false tax returns in the names of his Woburn newspaper route subscribers with the Massachusetts Department of Revenue and the Internal Revenue Service for the 2012 tax year. On those returns, the defendant would indicate that the applicant was entitled to state and federal refunds as they had pre-paid a disproportionate amount of tax withholding relative to their actual income earned that year.
The defendant would then direct the refund be directly deposited into a debit card account that he had set up in the name of his delivery customers as well as other residents who lived along his delivery route and residents of an elderly housing complex where his relatives were employed. Detection systems identified 54 fraudulent tax returns intercepted by the Massachusetts Department of Revenue before the payouts were made. However, in three instances, bogus returns claiming tax refunds were paid by the Massachusetts Department of Revenue and in two instances, the IRS issued refunds based on bogus returns he filed. The amount of monies obtained through his tax refund scheme totaled more than $17,000. Ogiugo filed returns seeking refunds from the Massachusetts Department of Revenue and the IRS in the amount of more than $200,000.
The case was investigated by the Woburn Police Department with the assistance of the U.S. Postal Inspection Service, the IRS and the Massachusetts Department of Revenue.
The prosecutors assigned to this case are Assistant District Attorneys Doug Cannon and Graham Van Epps. The Victim Witness Advocate is Danielle DeMeo. The Digital Evidence Investigator is Melissa Marino. The Lead Investigator is Woburn Detective Brian McManus.