Man accused of scam takes plea deal
Mogaji accused of scamming district out of $850K
A Nigerian man accused of scamming the Boulder Valley School District out of almost $1 million has taken a plea deal and will serve probation and have to pay more than $300,000 in restitution.
Sherifdeen Mogaji, 39, pleaded guilty to one count of theft, a Class 5 felony, on Oct. 16 and was sentenced to 10 years of probation and ordered to pay $369,733.83 in restitution.
In exchange, prosecutors dismissed a more serious theft count along with computer crime, identity theft and forgery charges.
“The successful prosecution of this case, which resulted in a felony conviction for the defendant and full restitution ordered for the school district and their insurance carriers, was the result of hard work by law enforcement and our prosecutors on the case,” Boulder District Attorney’s Office spokeswoman Shannon Carbone said in a statement.
The Boulder Valley School District also issued a statement Monday: “The Boulder Valley School District thanks law enforcement and prosecutors for their diligence in this case. It is crucially important that those that try to defraud government institutions, stealing critical community resources, be brought to justice.”
According to an arrest affidavit, Mogaji is accused of stealing about $850,000 in bond construction money that was supposed to go to contractor Adolfson and Peterson Construction. The work was part of a 2014 $576 million bond issue for the district, which voters approved 2014.
Investigators said someone with the school district in August 2016 was contacted by a man claiming to be with Adolfson and Peterson who asked to change the way the company was paid.
The district instructed the person to fill out a form, which was returned with what was later determined to be a forged signature of the company’s chief financial officer. The form specified a bank account in New Jersey for the district to send payments as direct deposits.
Adolfson and Peterson contacted the school district about a month later because it had failed to receive payments, and at
that time told the school district nobody from the company had requested a change in how payments were made.
During that time, four payments were made to the new account totaling $852,733.83. The bank was able to reverse three of the payments and froze about $300,000 still left in the account, in total recovering $480,800.51.
The alleged theft resulted in the Boulder Valley School District enacting several changes, including moving away from direct deposits to pay for bond work and other short-term vendors, instead using paper checks.