British-Nigerian Sentenced To 7 Years For $5M Fraud Scheme

A British-Nigerian Oludayo Adeagbo has received a seven-year prison sentence for his involvement in a multimillion-dollar business email compromise (BEC) scheme.

Adeagbo, who also goes by John Edwards and John Dayo, along with co-conspirators Donald Echeazu and Olabanji Egbinola, defrauded a North Carolina university of over $1.9 million through a sophisticated cyber-enabled financial fraud scheme.

Extradited from the United Kingdom in August 2022, the trio faced charges of conspiracy, wire fraud, and money laundering, with crimes spanning North Carolina, Texas, and Virginia.

The U.S. Department of Justice revealed that Adeagbo and his associates orchestrated what is known as a business email compromise (BEC) scheme. In such scams, fraudsters impersonate trusted companies or individuals, often by creating fake domains and email addresses, to mislead businesses and institutions into wiring large sums of money to fraudulent accounts.

Court records showed that Adeagbo and his team targeted high-value construction projects across the U.S., including a major development at a North Carolina university. To execute the scam, they registered a domain name nearly identical to that of the actual construction company handling the university project and created a similarly convincing email account impersonating a company employee. Using this fraudulent email, the team deceived university officials, successfully directing them to transfer $1.9 million into a bank account managed by an accomplice under Adeagbo’s instruction.

The scam continued beyond North Carolina, with Adeagbo and his co-conspirators deploying similar tactics across Texas, where they targeted local government entities and universities by posing as construction firms. In total, they secured over $3 million from the Texas schemes, bringing their total fraud haul to more than $5 million.

On April 8, Adeagbo pleaded guilty to the charges in both North Carolina and Texas. He has since been sentenced to seven years in prison and ordered to pay $942,655.03 in restitution.

Melissa Enoch

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