Nigerian Man Sentenced To U.S Prison For $1 Million Health Insurance Scam

A 37-year-old Nigerian man, Henry Ezeonyido, has been sentenced to just over two years in prison by a U.S. federal court in Boston.

Henry Ezeonyido was accused of leading a scheme that scammed health insurance companies out of more than $1 million using fake claims for overseas medical treatments.

In a statement on Wednesday, May 21, 2025, the U.S. Department of Justice said Ezeonyido, who lived in Taunton, Massachusetts, was sentenced by Judge Leo T. Sorokin to 27 months in prison.

Ezeonyido, who will be under supervised release for three years after serving his sentence, was also ordered to pay back $655,313 and give up nearly $397,000 he made through the scam.

The Nigerian pleaded guilty in February 2025 to one count of conspiracy to commit health care fraud and six counts of health care fraud.

He was originally arrested in July 2024, along with four others—Brendon Ashe, Aqiyla Atherton, Darline Cobbler, and Ariel Lambert—who all pleaded guilty and received probation.

Between October 2019 and February 2022, Henry Ezeonyido filed false claims with five different health insurers, pretending that he and others had received expensive emergency medical care while traveling abroad.

These claims often included fake injuries such as gunshot wounds, car accidents, or stabbings, all supposedly treated in foreign hospitals.

In reality, the individuals involved were often still in the United States when these supposed incidents happened.

Ezeonyido submitted fake medical records, bank documents, and even police reports to support the false claims.

Many of the submitted stories and documents were nearly identical across different claims, repeating the same fake details to make them look believable.

While some of the people he used in the scam were in on it, others had no idea their health insurance information was being used. In some cases,

Henry Ezeonyido tricked people into sharing their details and then demanded a share of the payout once the claims were approved.

The fake claims led to health insurance companies being billed over $1 million, with around $655,000 in actual payouts.

After the money came in, Ezeonyido received kickbacks from his co-conspirators, keeping nearly $400,000 for himself.

The case was prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorney Leslie A. Wright from the Health Care Fraud Unit, with investigations led by the FBI, the U.S. Postal Inspection Service, and the Insurance Fraud Bureau.

KanyiDaily recalls that another Nigerian-American, Oladapo Fadugba was recently indicted for wire fraud, identity theft, and lying during his U.S. citizenship process.