Nigeria Abroad
A US district court in Maryland yesterday sentenced Seun Banjo Ojedokun, a Nigerian who came to the US to pursue a doctorate in Chemical Engineering, to nine years in prison.
Ojedokun, 37, was arraigned and convicted on internet fraud charges from romance scam operations linked to him while he was in Nigeria. Along with other Nigerians, some already convicted, he was accused of perpetrating the scams and duping elderly Americans out of thousands of dollars.
The jail term also comes with an order for Ojedokun to pay $325,100 in restitution.
But remarks from his family and a Nigeria Abroad report on how innocent Nigerians may be getting jailed on fraud charges in America suggest Ojedokun might indeed be a victim—a scapegoat for other people’s crimes.
His family member who earlier spoke to the magazine swore Ojedokun merely operated a business café in Lagos, and that the documents traced to his address were created by strangers who committed the crimes in his business center.
He claims Ojedokun had little to his name but a family and kids left behind in Nigeria, as he ventured abroad with life savings to obtain a doctorate in engineering from the Illinois Institute of Technology.
He said not a cent of the fraud money was traced to Ojedokun, who could not even afford decent legal representation and had to work with state counsel. Efforts by his classmates in America to get him help, and those of his family in trying to get the Nigerian government to intervene, failed in the end.
Meanwhile, following the Nigeria Abroad report on the matter, a concerned Nigerian in the US indicated willingness to reach out to Ojedokun’s family with a view to mobilizing legal aid for him before the sentence. That intended intervention stands.
For more on Ojedokun and some other Nigerian convicts who may be innocent, click here.
This story first appeared in Nigeria Abroad
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