A United States federal court has sentenced a Nigerian social worker, Akeatha Diane Akintola, to five months in prison for stealing over $17,000 (about N23m) in Social Security survivor benefits meant for an autistic, orphaned minor under her professional care.
Akeatha Diane Akintola, 48, a former resident of Bellevue, Washington, pleaded guilty in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington to the theft of public funds.
Following her plea and sentencing hearing, Magistrate Judge S. Kate Vaughan ordered her into immediate federal custody, describing the crime as an “ethical breach beyond imagining.”
“There is no one more vulnerable than the victim in this case,” Judge Vaughan noted during the sentencing, slamming Akintola for actively targeting an intellectually disabled child who had recently lost her mother.
Exploiting a grieving tribal ward
Court documents reveal that Akintola was hired as a social worker for the Snoqualmie Tribe’s Indian Child Welfare department in January 2023. By September of that year, she secretly initiated a fraudulent scheme targeting a minor child with intellectual disabilities who had become a ward of the tribe following her mother’s death.
The child was legally entitled to monthly Social Security survivor benefits. Although the Snoqualmie Tribe strictly prohibits its social workers from serving as financial representative payees for children under their care, Akintola bypassed the protocol.
Using the deceased mother’s and the minor’s sensitive Social Security numbers alongside her own personal data, she applied over the telephone to become the child’s official representative payee.
Once the application was processed, she successfully diverted a total of $17,638 intended for the child’s upkeep into a personal bank account she controlled, spending the funds on personal retail shopping in North Bend, Washington.
The audacious cover-up unravels
The multi-month fraud unravelled through an act of sheer audacity in July 2024. Akintola accompanied her own supervisor to a local Social Security Administration (SSA) office to explicitly demand why the tribal ward had not been receiving her monthly benefit checks.
To the supervisor’s shock, SSA officials pulled up the records and revealed that Akintola herself was documented as the active representative payee receiving the deposits.
Though Akintola flatly denied the system’s records on the spot, she filed her resignation from the Snoqualmie Tribe the very next day and went into hiding.
Fleeing to West Africa under a false identity
Federal prosecutors noted that Akintola’s plea and sentencing hearing were originally set for May 22, 2026. However, she failed to appear in court, triggering an immediate investigation into her whereabouts.
U.S. law enforcement discovered that Akintola had fled the United States on May 20, 2026—just two days before her scheduled trial.
She used an internationally issued passport bearing a completely different last name to travel to Togo in West Africa in an attempt to permanently evade justice.
She was ultimately apprehended and brought back to face the federal court upon her re-entry into the United States.
“Weaponised position of power”
During the emotional sentencing, a representative speaking on behalf of the Snoqualmie Tribe expressed deep anger over the gross violation of institutional trust.
“In our profession, a social worker is meant to be a safekeeper. A protector for children who have been stripped of their safety, family, and stability,” the tribal representative told the court. “Ms Akintola did not just fail in that duty; she weaponised her position of power to systematically steal from a grieving, autistic child. This money was not a luxury. It was a lifeline.”
In addition to her five-month prison sentence, Judge Vaughan ordered Akintola to pay exactly $17,638 in restitution to the Social Security Administration. The court has also barred her from ever serving as a financial representative payee for any individual in the United States in the future.
The case was jointly investigated by the Social Security Administration Office of the Inspector General (SSA-OIG) and the Snoqualmie Tribal Police Department, with prosecution handled by Special Assistant U.S. Attorney Jessica M. Ly.
