A former Virginia Beach nurse aide was sentenced for identity theft and conspiracy Friday.
United States District Judge Arenda Wright Allen sentenced 36-year-old Emmanuel Effiong to 81 months in prison, followed by three years of supervised released, for conspiracy to defraud the government and aggravated identity theft, according to Dana Boente, Acting United States Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia.
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Boente said Effiong pleaded guilty to the charges on October 11, 2013.
According to court documents, Effiong and his codefendant, Festus Ighalo, were formerly nurse aides at Sentara’s Virginia General Hospital in Virginia Beach and used their positions to obtain Personally Identifiable Information from thousands of patients, mostly located in the Hampton Roads area.
Effiong and Ighalo are originally from Nigeria and now naturalized U.S. citizens. They got help from others in the U.S. and Nigeria to use the information — which included birth dates and social security numbers — to submit fraudulent federal tax returns with the Internal Revenue Service and receive tax refunds in the patients’ names.
Boente said Ighalo also pleaded guilty and will be sentenced on January 24.
