U.S. court jails Nigerian Olusegun Adejorin eight years for stealing $7.5 million from charities

A U.S. court has sentenced a Nigerian national, Olusegun Adejorin, to eight years in prison for his involvement in a $7.5 million wire fraud scheme.

Mr Adejorin, 32, bagged an eight-year sentence for infiltrating employee email accounts to steal more than $7.5 million from two charities, the U.S. Department of Justice said in a statement on Friday.

A U.S. District Judge, Theodore Chuang, sentenced Mr Adejorin to 96 months in prison, followed by three years of supervised release, for wire fraud, aggravated identity theft, and unauthorised access to a protected computer to obtain information.

According to the evidence presented at trial, between June and August 2020, Mr Adejorin perpetrated a scheme to defraud Victim 1, a charitable organisation located in Maryland, that provided investment services to other organisations.

Explaining how the 32-year-old Nigerian carried out his criminal acts, the DoJ said “through the scheme, Adejorin defrauded Victim 2, a charitable organization located in New York, by gaining access to employee email accounts and impersonating employees to induce financial transactions.”

“Among the acts in furtherance of the fraud scheme, Adejorin registered spoofed domain names, which he used to pose as employees of Victim 2 to request withdrawals of Victim 2’s funds from Victim 1.”

It added, “Adejorin also fraudulently obtained access to email accounts of Victim 1, which he used to send emails falsely confirming the fraudulent requests made in Victim 2’s name. He ultimately caused more than $7.5 million of Victim 2’s funds to be sent, pursuant to the fraudulent withdrawal requests, from Victim 1 to bank accounts that were not Victim 2’s bank accounts.”

Mr Adejorin, who was extradited from Ghana to the U.S. to face trial over his criminal activities in August 2024, was convicted of all charges by a federal jury in December 2025, after a six-day trial.