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By John Ogunsemore
Authorities in the United Kingdom have arrested a Nigerian resident, Farouk Adekunle Adepoju, pursuant to a United States request for extradition following his indictment on charges of wire fraud and computer fraud.
US Attorney for Western District of Pennsylvania, Troy Rivett disclosed this in a statement issued on Thursday, September 18.
Rivett said Adepoju was arrested in the UK on Monday, September 15, and is currently awaiting extradition to the US to face the seven-count Indictment in the Western District of Pennsylvania.
According to the indictment, which was unsealed on Thursday, between March 2023 and April 2023, Adepoju remotely accessed a protected computer belonging to a Western Pennsylvania construction company that was performing work for a university also located in the Western District of Pennsylvania.
Adepoju allegedly used this unauthorised access to create rule changes within the email account of an employee with the construction company, and then registered a spoofed domain and spoofed email account to assume the identity of another employee of that company.
The statement reads, “From that spoofed email account, Adepoju sent fraudulent emails to employees of the university, requesting that they update the construction company’s payment information to a fraudulent bank account.
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“Relying upon the emails, the university updated the payment information to the fraudulent bank account that Adepoju provided and sent a payment of approximately $235,266.80 to that account, funds that the university has not recovered.”
Adepoju is charged with six counts of wire fraud and one count of computer fraud.
The defendant faces a maximum total sentence of up to 20 years in prison for each of the wire fraud offenses and up to five years in prison for the computer fraud offence.
“Even from halfway across the world, however, Adepoju was not beyond the investigative reach of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
“His arrest in the United Kingdom underscores our district’s unwavering commitment to aggressively locate and prosecute cybercriminals worldwide with the assistance of our law enforcement partners—both here and abroad,” the US Attorney stated.
An indictment is an accusation and a defendant is presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty.
