By Abubakar Yunusa
Farouk Adekunle Adepoju, a Nigerian living in the United Kingdom, has been arrested over alleged $235,000 wire fraud involving Western Pennsylvania University in the United States.
Adepoju was arrested by UK authorities on September 15, 2025, and is currently awaiting extradition to the US to face a seven-count charge.
According to a statement published on the website of the US department of justice, Adepoju’s indictment was unsealed on Thursday.
Adepoju was said to have “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” between March 2023 and April 2023.
After gaining access to the computer, he “created 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”.
“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,” the statement reads.
“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 risks 20 years in prison if found guilty of the charges.