Nigerian Immigrant in Michigan Pleads Guilty to Fraud Scheme

Nkechy Ezeh, a Nigerian who served as a professor at Aquinas College until 2023, has pleaded guilty to wire fraud in a scheme that bled taxpayers for $1 million and forced an organization that funded early learning initiatives for poor kids to close.

Ezeh could face up to 20 years in prison for the fraud charge and another five years for tax evasion — a charge to which she also pleaded guilty on Wednesday.

It was 2018, when Nigerian owner of a day care center in Kansas City, Mo., pleaded guilty in federal court to submitting false information to the government as part of a fraud scheme to receive federal child care subsidies.
 

Hauwa Al-Hassan, 49, of Raymore, Mo., pleaded guilty before U.S. Chief District Judge Greg Kays to making false statements to the government.

Al-Hassan, a Nigerian immigrant, was the owner and CEO of Guidance Child Care Center, LLC, a child day care center in Kansas City, Mo. Al-Hassan was also the vice president of Guidance Academy of Science, Technology, Engineering and Math.

By pleading guilty, Al-Hassan admitted that she engaged in a pattern of fraudulent billing in order to receive funding to which she was not entitled under the federal Child Care and Development Fund grant program. Al-Hassan filed claims that reported more hours and children than actually attended her daycare center.

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