Nigerian man sentenced to 8 years in U.S. prison for $7.5m charity scam

A Nigerian national has been sentenced to eight years in a United States federal prison for carrying out a business email compromise scam that defrauded two charitable organisations of more than $7.5 million. District Judge Theodore Chuang sentenced 32-year-old Olusegun Adejorin to 96 months in prison, followed by three years of supervised release, after he was convicted of wire fraud, aggravated identity theft and unauthorised access to a protected computer to obtain information. The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) extradited Adejorin from Ghana to the United States in August 2024 to face trial.

Following a six-day trial in December 2025, a federal jury found him guilty on all charges. Attorney for the District of Maryland, announced the sentence alongside Jimmy Paul, Special Agent in Charge of the FBI Baltimore Field Office. According to evidence presented during the trial, Adejorin carried out the fraud scheme between June and August 2020, targeting two charitable organisations — one based in Maryland and another in New York.

The Maryland organisation provided investment services to other organisations, while the New York-based charity was the victim of the fraudulent transactions. Prosecutors said Adejorin gained unauthorised access to employees’ email accounts and impersonated them to initiate and approve financial transactions. As part of the scheme, he registered spoofed domain names that allowed him to impersonate employees of the New York charity and request withdrawals of the organisation’s funds from the Maryland charity.

He also gained fraudulent access to email accounts belonging to employees of the Maryland organisation and used them to send messages falsely confirming the withdrawal requests made in the New York charity’s name. The scheme ultimately resulted in more than $7.5 million belonging to the New York charity being transferred from the Maryland organisation to bank accounts that were not associated with the intended recipient. Attorney’s Office commended the FBI Baltimore Field Office for investigating the case, as well as authorities in Ghana, including the FBI Legal Attaché in Accra, the Office of the Attorney General and Ministry of Justice, the Economic and Organised Crime Office, Ghana Immigration Service, Ghana Police Service – INTERPOL, and the National Intelligence Bureau.