A U.S. District Court in Baltimore, Maryland, has sentenced a 29-year-old Nigerian, Temitope Bashua, to 30 months in federal prison for his role in a multi-year scheme that exploited America’s COVID-19 relief programmes and defrauded the government of more than $290,000.
Bashua, who pleaded guilty, will also serve two years of supervised release after completing his jail term.
The sentence, delivered on November 20, 2025 by Judge Stephanie A. Gallagher, followed Bashua’s admission that he conspired with others to steal unemployment insurance (UI) benefits and obtain Economic Injury Disaster Loans (EIDL) using the stolen identities of unsuspecting victims.
According to court documents, the scheme ran from May 2020 to September 2022, during which Bashua and his co-conspirators used stolen personal information to file fraudulent unemployment insurance claims in Maryland and California.
Investigators said the group also submitted two fake EIDL applications to the Small Business Administration (SBA) in October 2020, using victims’ identities to claim funds meant for small businesses affected by the pandemic.
The CARES Act ; a law passed in March 2020 to cushion the economic effects of COVID-19 – provided unemployment benefits and recovery loans to struggling individuals and businesses. But prosecutors said Bashua exploited these programmes for personal gain.
Through the fake loan applications alone, he received over $290,000 from the U.S. Treasury.
Beyond the COVID-19 fraud, Bashua also admitted participating in cyber intrusion, romance scams, and business email compromise (BEC) schemes — crimes that have cost victims worldwide billions of dollars.
The conviction was announced by Kelly O. Hayes, U.S. Attorney for the District of Maryland, alongside senior officials from the Department of Labor’s Office of Inspector General (DOL-OIG), Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), and the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Inspector General (DHS-OIG).
They described the case as part of an ongoing effort to clamp down on individuals who took advantage of global hardship during the COVID-19 crisis.
Authorities did not immediately state whether Bashua will be required to repay the stolen funds as part of his sentence.
The case adds to a growing list of prosecutions involving Nigerians and other foreign nationals implicated in COVID-19 benefits fraud schemes across the United States.
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