A 32-year-old Nigerian, Olusegun Adejorin, has been sentenced to eight years in a United States prison for his role in a sophisticated email fraud scheme that diverted more than $7.5m belonging to two charitable organisations.
Adejorin was handed the 96-month sentence by US District Judge Theodore Chuang and will spend an additional three years under supervised release after completing his prison term.
The United States Attorney’s Office for the District of Maryland disclosed this in a statement, adding that Adejorin was convicted of wire fraud, aggravated identity theft and unauthorised access to a protected computer.
According to the authorities, Adejorin targeted two charities based in Maryland and New York, exploiting employee email accounts to impersonate officials and manipulate financial transactions.
Prosecutors said he created fake internet domains resembling those of employees of one of the organisations. He allegedly used the fraudulent domains to request the withdrawal of funds belonging to the New York-based charity.
The stolen money was subsequently transferred from the Maryland organisation to bank accounts controlled by or linked to the fraud scheme, rather than the legitimate accounts of the intended beneficiary.
The US authorities said Adejorin also gained unauthorised access to email accounts of employees of the Maryland charity, using them to falsely authenticate the fraudulent withdrawal requests.
In total, the scheme resulted in more than $7.5m being diverted from the New York charity, according to evidence presented during the trial.
“Adejorin perpetrated a scheme to defraud” the organisations by gaining access to employee accounts and impersonating officials to facilitate unauthorised financial transfers, the prosecutors said.
Adejorin was extradited from Ghana to the US in August 2024 after the Federal Bureau of Investigation worked with Ghanaian authorities and the US Department of Justice’s Office of International Affairs to secure his transfer.
A federal jury found him guilty of all the charges in December 2025 after 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 praised the FBI Baltimore Field Office, its Legal Attaché in Accra and the Ghanaian agencies involved in the investigation, while Assistant US Attorneys Joshua Rosenthal and Darren Gardner prosecuted the case.
0 Comments