A 32-year-old Nigerian, Olusegun Adejorin, has been sentenced to eight years in a United States federal prison for a business email compromise scheme that defrauded two charitable organisations of more than $7.5 million.
The United States Department of Justice disclosed this in a statement on Friday.
U.S. District Judge Theodore Chuang sentenced Adejorin to 96 months in prison, followed by three years of supervised release.
He was sentenced for wire fraud, aggravated identity theft and unauthorised access to a protected computer to obtain information.
According to the Justice Department, Adejorin was extradited from Ghana to the United States by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in August 2024 to face trial.
A federal jury convicted him on all charges in December 2025 after a six-day trial.
U.S. Attorney for the District of Maryland, Kelly O. Hayes, announced the sentence alongside the Special Agent in Charge of the FBI Baltimore Field Office, Jimmy Paul.
Evidence presented during the trial showed that Adejorin carried out the fraud scheme between June and August 2020.
According to prosecutors, the scheme targeted a Maryland-based charitable organisation, identified as Victim 1, which provided investment services to other organisations.
The fraud also affected another charitable organisation based in New York, identified as Victim 2.
Prosecutors said Adejorin gained unauthorised access to employees’ email accounts and impersonated staff members to induce fraudulent financial transactions.
As part of the scheme, he allegedly registered spoofed domain names, which he used to pose as employees of Victim 2 and request withdrawals of the organisation’s funds held by Victim 1.
Adejorin also fraudulently gained access to email accounts belonging to Victim 1 and used them to send emails falsely confirming the fraudulent withdrawal requests made in the name of Victim 2, according to the Justice Department.
The scheme ultimately caused more than $7.5 million belonging to Victim 2 to be transferred from Victim 1 to bank accounts that were not owned by the charitable organisation.
Hayes commended the FBI Baltimore Field Office and the FBI Legal Attaché in Accra, Ghana, for their roles in the investigation.
She also acknowledged the support of Ghana’s 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 also worked with the International Cooperation Unit of the Office of the Attorney-General of Ghana to secure Adejorin’s extradition to the United States.
Hayes further commended Assistant U.S. Attorneys Joshua Rosenthal and Darren Gardner for their roles in prosecuting the case.
