Nigerian Convicted of $7.5m Charity Email Scam Gets 8-Year U.S. Prison Sentence

A 32-year-old Nigerian national, Olusegun Adejorin, has been sentenced to 96 months in a U.S. federal prison for orchestrating a business email compromise scheme that stole more than $7.5 million from a New York-based charitable organisation.

U.S. District Judge Theodore Chuang handed down the eight-year sentence, followed by three years of supervised release, after Adejorin was convicted of wire fraud, aggravated identity theft and unauthorised access to a protected computer to obtain information.

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

A federal jury convicted him on all charges following a six-day trial that concluded in December 2025.

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

Trial evidence showed that Adejorin conducted the fraud between June and August 2020, targeting two charitable organisations — one located in Maryland and another in New York.

The Maryland organisation provided investment services to other organisations, while the New York charity ultimately lost more than $7.5 million through the fraudulent scheme.

Prosecutors said Adejorin illegally accessed employees’ email accounts and used their identities to initiate and approve financial transactions.

He also registered spoofed domain names to impersonate employees of the New York charity and submit requests for the withdrawal of the organisation’s funds held by the Maryland charity.

After making the withdrawal requests, Adejorin allegedly accessed email accounts belonging to employees of the Maryland organisation and used them to falsely confirm the requests as legitimate.

As a result, more than $7.5 million belonging to the New York charity was transferred from the Maryland organisation into bank accounts that had no connection to the intended recipient.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office praised the FBI Baltimore Field Office for its investigation and recognised the cooperation of several Ghanaian agencies, 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.

The Justice Department’s Office of International Affairs collaborated with Ghanaian authorities to facilitate Adejorin’s extradition to the United States.

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

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