Nigerian bags 8 years in US prison for $7.5m charity fraud

A 32-year-old Nigerian, Olusegun Adejorin, has been sentenced to eight years in a United States federal prison for defrauding two charitable organisations of more than $7.5 million through an email-based fraud scheme.

Adejorin was sentenced to 96 months behind bars by U.S. District Judge Theodore Chuang. He will also serve three years under supervised release after completing his prison term.

The sentence followed his conviction on charges of wire fraud, aggravated identity theft and unauthorised access to a protected computer to obtain information.

Adejorin was extradited from Ghana to the US by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in August 2024 to face the charges.

A federal jury convicted him on all counts following a six-day trial held in December 2025.

The U.S. Attorney for the District of Maryland, Kelly O. Hayes, announced the sentence alongside Jimmy Paul, Special Agent in Charge of the FBI Baltimore Field Office.

According to evidence presented in court, Adejorin executed the fraud between June and August 2020, targeting two charities, one located in Maryland and the other in New York.

Prosecutors said he infiltrated employees’ email accounts and impersonated them to manipulate financial transactions.

He allegedly created fake internet domains resembling those of the New York charity and used them to submit withdrawal requests for the organisation’s funds held by the Maryland-based organisation.

Adejorin then allegedly accessed the email accounts of employees of the Maryland organisation and used them to falsely confirm the transactions.

The scheme resulted in more than $7.5 million belonging to the New York charity being transferred to bank accounts that had no connection with the intended recipient.

US authorities said the case was investigated by the FBI Baltimore Field Office with assistance from several Ghanaian agencies.

Those involved included Ghana’s Office of the Attorney General and Ministry of Justice, Economic and Organised Crime Office, Ghana Immigration Service, Ghana Police Service–INTERPOL and National Intelligence Bureau, alongside the FBI Legal Attaché in Accra.

The US Department of Justice’s Office of International Affairs also worked with Ghanaian authorities to facilitate Adejorin’s extradition.

Assistant U.S. Attorneys Joshua Rosenthal and Darren Gardner handled the prosecution.