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By Thomas Moriarty Mail Tribune May 13. 2015 4:06PM Feds allege Georgia, Maryland residents defrauded Oregon taxpayers of more than $2 million Federal prosecutors in Medford are pursuing wire fraud charges against five East Coast men they say fraudulently filed tax returns worth over $6.6 million using information stolen from Oregon taxpayers, including some who lived in Medford, according to an indictment unsealed Tuesday in U.S. District Court. Lateef Aina Animawun, Oluwatobi Reuben Dehinbo, Oluwaseunara Temitope Osayinbi and Oluwamuyiwa Abolad Olawoye, all of Marietta, Georgia, were arrested after federal law enforcement agents served a series of search warrants in Georgia and Maryland in connection with the indictment, which charges the men with conspiracy to commit mail fraud, mail fraud, wire fraud and aggravated identity theft. The men are expected to be arraigned in Oregon at a later date. Another defendant, Emmanuel Oluwatosin Kazeem of Maryland, has an outstanding warrant for his arrest.  According to the indictment, filed under seal May 7, the men stole the Internal Revenue Service PINs for over 125,000 taxpayers and used the PINs to file tax returns in the victims' names. According to a news release from the U.S. Attorney's Office, the IRS rejected $4.6 million of the returns, but the defendants were able to fraudulently claim $2.2 million in refunds. The defendants face a minimum of two years in prison for each count if convicted of the aggravated identity theft charges, the release said. Gerri Badden, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Attorney's Office in Portland, said she couldn't comment specifically on why the case was being handled by the agency's Medford division, but did point to sections of the indictment that identified some of the victims as living in Medford. Badden was unable to provide the date for when the investigation began but said the IRS Criminal Division was the lead agency in the joint investigation, which also involved the FBI, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the U.S. Postal Inspection Service, the State Department and the Oregon Department of Revenue Fraud Unit. Reporter Thomas Moriarty can be reached at 541-776-4471, or by email at [email protected] . Follow him at @ThomasDMoriarty . http://www.mailtribune.com/article/20150513/NEWS/150519777 © 2016 Copyright © 1995-2011 Crain Communications Inc. All Rights Reserved. Terms of Use Privacy Statement -->