CV Man Charged in $1M COVID Relief Scheme
A Castro Valley man has been charged for his part of a scam that the FBI says resulted in him getting more than $1 million in unemployment benefits falsely acquired through the government’s COVID-19 economic relief program.
According to the criminal complaint unsealed last Friday, Idowu Hashim Shittu, 46, of Castro Valley engaged in a scheme to use the personal information of other people to obtain pandemic-related unemployment benefits between March and the end of July 2020.
Mr. Shittu made his first federal court appearance in San Francisco last week and was expected to enter a plea this past Monday. If convicted, he could face up to 45 years in prison.
As part of the CARES Act (Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act), the federal government earmarked hundreds of billions of dollars in unemployment benefits to those affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. Since then, many states have been inundated by fraud claims. According to the complaint’s allegations, Shittu fraudulently submitted requests for such benefits and then pocketed some of the money or spent it in stores around the Bay Area.
“In the first instance, the Washington State Employment Security Department (ESD) received a request for unemployment benefits on May 5, 2020,” read a statement from the US Department of Justice. “The request was submitted in the name of a resident of Mercer Island, Washington—identified in the complaint only by the initials ‘S.O.’ The request included the supposed applicant’s correct date of birth and social security number. The Washington ESD responded to the request by depositing more than $9,000 in an account linked to a reloadable debit card. A subsequent investigation revealed the account was used by someone in California. Specifically, a person withdrew cash from several automatic teller machines located in the Bay Area, including Hayward, Castro Valley, and San Jose.”
When investigators followed up with the person identified as S.O., he told detectives he had not been in California at any time during 2020. Shittu was later arrested after a surveillance camera at a Walmart showed him using an ATM to withdraw cash from S.O.’s account.
The FBI says Shittu pulled the same scam two other times using unemployment benefits from the Washington ESD to Washington residents—one from Seattle and the other from Olympia—after which ATMs in the Bay Area were used to withdraw that money from the accounts or the money was spent in Bay Area stores. In each case, the FBI says a person fitting Shittu’s description was photographed engaging in transactions relating to the accounts.
The prosecution is the result of an investigation by the U.S. Department of Labor Office of Inspector General and the Federal Bureau of Investigation.