US court jails Osun monarch for $4.4m COVID fraud
A United States District Court has sentenced a monarch from Osun State, Nigeria, Oba Joseph Oloyede, to three years imprisonment for $4,408,543 COVID-19 fraud. The trial judge, Christopher Boyko, announced the sentence on Tuesday after the monarch pleaded guilty to the charges. The judge ordered Oloyede, who is the Apetu of Ipetumodu in Osun State, […]
A United States District Court has sentenced a monarch from Osun State, Nigeria, Oba Joseph Oloyede, to three years imprisonment for $4,408,543 COVID-19 fraud.
The trial judge, Christopher Boyko, announced the sentence on Tuesday after the monarch pleaded guilty to the charges.
The judge ordered Oloyede, who is the Apetu of Ipetumodu in Osun State, to “serve three years of supervised release after imprisonment and pay $4,408,543 in restitution.”
According to a statement by the United States Attorney’s Office in the Northern District of Ohio, Oloyede will forfeit his residence at Medina and the sum of $96,006, which was earlier seized by investigators.
In April 2024, Oloyede was arrested alongside Edward Oluwasanmi, a Nigerian pastor, over the COVID-19 fraud.
The duo were charged to court on 13 counts bordering on conspiracy to commit wire fraud, conspiracy to defraud, money laundering, and engaging in monetary transactions with criminally derived property.
They were accused of using companies under their control to create schemes such as Paycheck Protection Programme (PPP) loans and Economic Injury Disaster Loans (EIDLs) applications containing false information for companies to defraud the public from April 2020 through February 28, 2022.
They also allegedly submitted falsified tax and wage documents to support these applications.
The duo had pleaded guilty to some of the offences and submitted plea bargain agreements. Oloyede is a dual citizen of the USA and Nigeria.