Plea Entered in Glastonbury Schools ID Theft Case

GLASTONBURY, CT — A Nigerian national accused to pillaging the personal information of Glastonbury School system employees has entered a plea, a leading prosecutor said.

John Durham, United States attorney for the District of Connecticut, said that Daniel Adekunle Ojo, 34, a citizen of Nigeria residing in Durham, N.C., entered a guilty plea on Thursday in New Haven federal court to fraud and identity theft offenses stemming from a scheme to obtain the personal identifying information of school employees in Glastonbury and elsewhere, and to file false tax returns in the names of the ID theft victims.

According to case records, in February 2017, an employee of the Glastonbury Public Schools received an email that appeared to be sent by another Glastonbury school system employee. The email contained a request to send W-2 tax information for all employees of the school system, Durham said.

The recipient of the email responded by sending copies of the W-2 information for approximately 1,600 Glastonbury Public Schools employees, according to case records. After the W-2 information was emailed, approximately 122 suspicious Internal Revenue Service 1040 forms were filed electronically in the names of the employees, according to case records.

The 122 tax returns claimed tax refunds totaling $596,897 and six of them were processed, resulting in $36,926 in fraudulent refunds deposited into various bank accounts, he said.

Ojo used aol.com and gmail.com accounts and a search of Ojo’s gmail account revealed emails implicating him in the scheme. One email contained six W-2 forms of employees of Glastonbury Public Schools, and the employees’ personal identifying information, Durham said.

The investigation also included phishing incidents that "victimized" the Groton Public School system and the Bloomington Independent School District in Minnesota, Durham said.

Ojo entered a guilty plea to one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud, an offense that carries a maximum prison term of 20 years, and one count of aggravated identity theft, an offense that carries a mandatory consecutive term of at least two years.

Judge Meyer scheduled sentencing for Sept. 13.

Ojo has been detained since his arrest on Aug. 3. The investigation revealed that Ojo entered the U.S. on a visitor’s visa on May 23, 2016, and failed to depart on his scheduled date of June 8, 2016.

Photo Credit: Glastonbury Public Schools

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