ANCHORAGE, Alaska (KTUU) – A Pennsylvania man pleaded guilty and was sentenced Tuesday for committing wire fraud in service of a 2022 Permanent Fund Dividend fraud scheme, according to the US Department of Justice.
Adepoju Babatunde Salako, 33, pleaded guilty to seven counts of wire fraud, the DOJ reports. He was sentenced to a year and a half in prison, which will run concurrent to a COVID relief fund and international money laundering case in the District of Colorado, where he was sentenced to six and a half years in prison and ordered to pay $2.5 million in restitution.
Court documents claim Salako obtained the personal information of Alaska residents and submitted seven applications to the Department of Revenue to obtain their PFD funds. He created new email accounts for each Alaska resident whose information he obtained and gained control of at least seven myAlaska accounts.
Once inside the accounts, Salako changed the account information to route communications to the email accounts he controlled. The DOJ claims he also changed each applicant’s bank information to route the PFD payments to bank accounts he controlled.
Salako also tried to hide his identity by using a VPN to appear that six of the application submissions were submitted from an IP address in Alaska, court documents state. The remaining application was submitted using an IP address in Philadelphia. Records from Salako’s personal email account showed logins from the same IP address.
The State of Alaska determined the applications were fraudulent and denied them. Had he been successful, Salako would have defrauded the State and victims $22,988. The victims each received $3,284 from the DOR. Salako was previously indicted in September 2025.
“Stealing an identity to exploit the Permanent Fund Dividend will not be tolerated,” said Department Investigations Manager Scott Stair of the DOR Criminal Investigations Unit. “The Department of Revenue remains committed to protecting Alaskans from financial fraud and holding accountable anyone who seeks to profit though [sic] deception.”
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