A UK-based Nigerian, Farouk Adekunle Adepoju, is now awaiting extradition to the U.S. and could be sentenced to 125 years in jail for swindling Western Pennsylvania University of over $235,000 in a wire and computer fraud scheme.

The U.S. Department of Justice, in a statement on Thursday, announced that Mr Adepoju was arrested by U.K. authorities “pursuant to a United States request for extradition following his indictment on charges of wire fraud and computer fraud on September 15, 2025.”

“Mr Adepoju is currently awaiting extradition to the United States to face the seven-count indictment in the Western District of Pennsylvania,” the DoJ said.

Charged with six counts of wire fraud and one count of computer fraud, Mr Adepoju risks a cumulative sentence of 125 years in prison, as U.S. law stipulates a “maximum total sentence of up to 20 years in prison for each of the wire fraud offences and up to five years in prison for the computer fraud offence” he committed.

According to Mr Adepoju’s indictment document, between March 2023 and April 2023, he remotely accessed a protected computer belonging to a Western Pennsylvania construction company that was performing work for a university located in the Western District of Pennsylvania.

Expatiating on Mr Adepoju’s fraudulent scheme, the DoJ said he “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.”

It added, “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. 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.”

Acting United States Attorney Troy Rivetti said, “Adepoju is charged with using sophisticated cyber means to illegally access accounts belonging to a business in order to victimise one of our region’s universities.”

He added, “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.”