By John Ogunsemore
A Nigerian upcoming artiste, Onomen Uduebor has been sentenced to three years and three months in prison by a United States District Court in Seattle, Washington for $140,000 fraud.
Acting US Attorney for the Western District of Washington, Teal Luthy Miller made the announcement in a Monday statement.
Uduebor, 39, was arrested in the United Kingdom on an indictment in September 2023 and extradited to the US in March 2025.
In April 2025, he pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit wire fraud and aggravated identity theft for a scheme to steal and use income tax data for fraud.
Miller said Uduebor participated in a conspiracy that involved tricking companies around the United States into providing W-2 information on their employees.
One of the companies is based in Tukwila, Washington.
Form W-2 is a tax form used in the United States to report wages paid to employees and the taxes withheld from them.
According to Miller, “If the targeted Human Resources employee resisted providing the information via email, a schemer berated them via email posing as the company CEO.”
The US Attorney added, “This conduct damaged companies, employees, and the Internal Revenue Service. While the IRS caught most of the fake tax refund filings, it left the individual victims with tax headaches and a sense of fear since their identities had been stolen.”
According to the indictment, between February 2016 and April 2017, the conspirators created false emails that appeared to come from a company executive asking the Human Resources Department for the W-2 data.
The conspirators manipulated the email so that any reply would go to an email address that they controlled.
The conspirators then used the information from the W-2s to file more than 300 bogus tax returns claiming more than $1 million in tax refunds.
The conspirators targeted companies across the US in this scheme.
Uduebor admitted filing 150 of the false tax returns and tracked the refunds and payments to bank accounts that the schemers set up in the names of the victims.
While the IRS paid out about $140,000 to the fraudsters, Uduebor said he received only $10,000 from the scheme.
“The IRS was able to seize some of the money back from the conspirators, so the total restitution owed to the US Treasury is $122,720,” Miller said.
Uduebor was ordered to forfeit the $10,000 that he admitted to earning and pay $122,720 in restitution to the IRS.
At the sentencing hearing US District Judge James L. Robart said, “He freely participated in the fraud and had a substantial role in the scheme.
“Thirty years old is not a young man and he ought to have known better.”
The statement quoted Uduebor as saying in court, “I have read the victim impact statements and I know an apology is not enough…. I was desperate to succeed in my music career. It is not an excuse, but it is the truth.”
He is likely to be deported to Nigeria following his prison term.