NIGERIAN SENTENCED TO EIGHT YEARS IN US PRISON FOR $7.5M CHARITY EMAIL FRAUD
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By Aishat Momoh. O.
A Nigerian national, Olusegun Adejorin, has been sentenced to eight years in prison in the United States for defrauding two charitable organisations of more than $7.5 million through a business email compromise scheme.
The United States Attorney’s Office for the District of Maryland disclosed this in a statement published on its website on Friday.
US District Judge Theodore Chuang sentenced 32-year-old Adejorin to 96 months in prison, followed by three years of supervised release.
He was convicted of wire fraud, aggravated identity theft and unauthorised access to a protected computer to obtain information.
According to the US Attorney’s Office, Adejorin targeted two charitable organisations, one based in Maryland and the other in New York, by gaining unauthorised access to employee email accounts and impersonating staff members to facilitate fraudulent financial transactions.
Evidence presented during his six-day trial showed that Adejorin registered spoofed domain names to impersonate employees of the New York-based organisation and used them to request withdrawals of its funds from the Maryland organisation.
He subsequently gained fraudulent access to email accounts belonging to the Maryland organisation and used them to send messages falsely confirming the withdrawal requests.
Through the scheme, more than $7.5 million belonging to the New York charity was transferred from the Maryland organisation to bank accounts controlled by individuals who were not authorised recipients of the funds.
“Adejorin perpetrated a scheme to defraud Victim 1, a charitable organization located in Maryland, that provided investment services to other organisations,” the attorney’s office said.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation extradited Adejorin from Ghana to the United States in August 2024 to face trial.
A federal jury found him guilty of all the charges in December 2025 following a six-day trial.
US Attorney for the District of Maryland, Kelly Hayes, announced the sentence alongside FBI Baltimore Field Office Special Agent in Charge Jimmy Paul.
Hayes commended investigators from the FBI Baltimore Field Office, the FBI Legal Attaché in Accra, Ghana, and Ghanaian law enforcement agencies involved in the investigation.
The US Department of Justice’s Office of International Affairs worked with Ghana’s Office of the Attorney-General to secure Adejorin’s extradition to the United States.
The case was prosecuted by Assistant US Attorneys Joshua Rosenthal and Darren Gardner.
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