A Philadelphia man who cashed in on the chaos of the pandemic was sentenced Tuesday in Denver federal court to 78 months in prison and ordered to pay $2,581,002.50 in restitution after admitting he helped steer nationwide scams that drained COVID relief funds and duped people in online romance schemes. Prosecutors say the operation touched more than 30 states and leaned on fake or stolen identities to push through bogus unemployment, PPP and Economic Injury Disaster Loan applications.
According to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Colorado, the defendant is 34-year-old Adepoju Babtunde Salako of Philadelphia, who pleaded guilty to one count of wire-fraud conspiracy and one count of money-laundering conspiracy. U.S. District Judge Charlotte N. Sweeney handed down the 78-month sentence, and prosecutors say Salako also agreed to plead guilty to additional wire-fraud counts in the District of Alaska as part of the same deal.
How prosecutors say the scheme worked
Investigators told CBS News Colorado that more than 1,000 stolen or fabricated identities were used by Salako and his co-conspirators to file fraudulent unemployment and Economic Injury Disaster Loan applications in over 30 states, raking in millions in pandemic aid. Many of the EIDL payments flowed out of a Small Business Administration finance center in Denver, and authorities say the crew tried to hide the cash by recruiting victims of online romance scams to move the money, which Salako then sent overseas. The fake love was free, but the money, investigators note, was very real.
Sentencing and who investigated
The U.S. Attorney’s Office credits work by IRS Criminal Investigation, the U.S. Postal Service Office of Inspector General and the Colorado Department of Labor and Employment with helping crack the case, and says Assistant U.S. Attorney Craig Fansler led the prosecution in court. Officials list the case number as 25-cr-00162-CNS and say Salako was ordered to repay $2,581,002.50 to the fraud victims.
Local ties and victims
Local reports identify Salako as an Elkins Park resident, highlighting how investigators connected activity in Pennsylvania to filings and bank accounts that moved money through Colorado and beyond. Victims included taxpayers whose pandemic relief was siphoned off before it ever reached them, along with people who thought they were in online relationships only to discover they had been turned into unwitting money movers. Federal prosecutors describe the fallout as both financially punishing and personally brutal for those caught in the schemes.
What this means
Coverage of the case, including a CBS News Colorado video on the sentencing, places the outcome within a broader federal push to chase down pandemic-era fraud and the criminal networks that use dating platforms as informal money-laundering pipelines. Prosecutors say sentences like Salako’s, paired with hefty restitution orders, are intended to send a message to would-be copycats and to claw back at least some of the cash for the people and programs that were supposed to receive it in the first place.
