5 Men Charged With Operating $9-Million Tax Fraud Scheme

Five Southland men were arrested Wednesday on charges of operating a massive scheme designed to collect more than $9 million in fraudulent income tax refunds, the U.S. attorney’s office in Los Angeles said.

Although most of the phony claims were detected before refunds were sent out, several checks were mailed to privately operated mailboxes, many of which had been leased by the defendants using fictitious names, Internal Revenue Service investigators said.

Arrested Wednesday--the filing deadline for most income tax payments--were Barry Nnanna, 37, of Sherman Oaks; Gabriel Popoola, 46, of Hawthorne; Dele Babalola Akanmu, 43, of Los Angeles, and brothers Samuel Aragbaye, 46, and Olabisi Aragbaye, 39, both of Riverside.

The Aragbayes and Akanmu were named in a 35-count indictment returned by a federal grand jury on Jan. 20. Nnanna and Popoola were charged in a criminal complaint filed by federal prosecutors on April 3.

Each of the defendants was charged with conspiracy to submit false income tax returns and with filing false income tax returns.

Assistant U.S. Atty. Manuel A. Abascal said the defendants--each of whom used several aliases--filed the false returns on behalf of unknowing individuals, some of whom were children or were homeless. In some cases, Abascal said, the returns were filed in the names of people who did not exist.

Abascal said the phony returns claimed refunds for such things as earned income tax credit.

The tax-refund scheme, which U.S. Atty. Nora M. Manella described as one of the largest ever prosecuted by federal officials, was investigated primarily by the Riverside office of the IRS.