A man-in-the-middle phishing scheme that cost homebuyers $12 million
Kolade Akinwale Ojelade, a 34-year-old Nigerian national living in Leicester, UK, was sentenced in the US District Court for the Northern District of Texas to 316 months (over 26 years) in federal prison for a phishing and email-spoofing scheme that intercepted real estate down payments. Prosecutors said actual losses reached about $12 million against an intended loss of more than $100 million, and he was ordered to pay $3,386,908 in restitution.
- Year
- 2024
- Where
- United States
- Outcome
- Sentenced
- Reported loss
- $12.0 million
- Victims
- Not stated in the sources
- Schemes
- Real estate closing wire fraud
- Last reviewed
- 2026-10-30
The facts, as recorded
- Ojelade sent phishing emails to US real estate businesses to gain access to their company email accounts, then monitored the compromised mailboxes' traffic to find transactions approaching a large payment.
- Once a transaction was close to payment, he intercepted the legitimate wiring instructions, altered the account details, and resent the messages from spoofed email addresses that closely mimicked the original senders, a technique prosecutors and coverage describe as a 'man-in-the-middle' attack.
- Victims, including prospective homebuyers and real estate companies believing they were paying a title company, sent funds to accounts he and his co-conspirators controlled; the money was then withdrawn or moved to other accounts.
- He was indicted in February 2023, extradited from the UK to the United States in April 2024, and pleaded guilty that summer to wire fraud affecting a financial institution and aggravated identity theft.
- He was sentenced on November 4, 2024 to a combined 316 months in federal prison and ordered to pay $3,386,908 in restitution; he will be subject to deportation after serving his sentence.
- FBI Acting Special Agent in Charge P.J. O'Brien said: "Mr. Ojelade callously engaged in a scheme that stole millions of dollars from prospective homeowners."
- US Attorney Leigha Simonton said: "Even the most conscientious among us could get taken in by a man-in-the-middle scam as devious as this one," and that her office was proud Ojelade would be unable to victimize homebuyers for the next quarter-century.
Why this case matters
This is the longest sentence on this page for this exact scheme, and the clearest documented example of the “man-in-the-middle” technique in its purest form: no malware, no ransomware, just a stolen mailbox, patience, and a single altered email sent at exactly the right moment.
The scale of the intended harm
Prosecutors said actual losses reached about $12 million, but the amount Ojelade attempted to steal was far larger: more than $100 million in intended losses, a gap that reflects how many of his fraudulent redirections were caught or reversed before the money was gone for good.
Extradited, not just indicted
Ojelade was indicted in February 2023 while living in Leicester, UK, and was extradited to the United States over a year later, in April 2024, before pleading guilty that summer. The case shows that this scheme’s reach into US closings does not depend on the perpetrator ever setting foot in the country where the fraud lands.
The caveat
Every fact above comes from the defendant’s own guilty plea and the resulting federal sentencing; nothing here is a contested allegation. The precise breakdown of the 316-month sentence between the wire fraud and aggravated identity theft counts was not available in the coverage used for this page.
Sources
- Nigerian man Sentenced to 26+ years in real estate phishing scams. Security Affairs. Accessed 2026-10-30. Supports: The defendant's name, age, nationality, residence, the man-in-the-middle phishing and spoofing mechanism, the sentence, restitution figure, and actual and intended loss amounts.
- US Sentences Nigerian to 26 Years in Prison for Stealing Millions Through Phishing. SecurityWeek. Accessed 2026-10-30. Supports: The charges (wire fraud and aggravated identity theft), the indictment and extradition dates, and the FBI special agent's quote.
- Nigerian Handed 26-Year Sentence for Real Estate Phishing Scam. Infosecurity Magazine. Accessed 2026-10-30. Supports: The full mechanism description, the restitution figure ordered by the Texas District Court, and the US Attorney's quote.