A Nigerian businessman, Charles Uchenna Nwadavid, has been sentenced to two years in federal prison by a U.S. District Court after finding him guilty of orchestrating a multi-million-dollar fraud scheme.
The 35-year-old, based in Abuja, will be deported to Nigeria after serving his sentence, according to a statement released by the U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ) on Friday.
Nwadavid was ordered to pay $2,724,810.41 in restitution and will also serve one year of supervised release upon completion of his prison term, before deportation proceedings begin.
Court documents revealed that between 2016 and September 2019, Nwadavid participated in a network of romance scams that deceived unsuspecting victims across the United States into transferring large sums of money overseas.
One Massachusetts victim was duped into receiving and forwarding funds from other victims to Nwadavid, who then moved the money through a series of cryptocurrency transactions.
Prosecutors said he repeatedly accessed victims’ bank accounts remotely, funnelling their funds into accounts he controlled on LocalBitcoins, a peer-to-peer crypto platform.
Nwadavid was arrested in April 2025 upon his arrival at Dallas–Fort Worth International Airport on a flight from the United Kingdom.
At the time of his arrest, he was already facing a federal grand jury indictment in Boston on charges of mail fraud and money laundering, filed in 2024.
After months of legal proceedings, he pleaded guilty in June 2025, paving the way for Friday’s sentencing by Judge Leo T. Sorokin of the U.S. District Court in Massachusetts.
The DoJ noted that Nwadavid’s case points to the continued global crackdown on cross-border cyber and romance scams. He is not the first Nigerian national to face such charges in the United States.
In a similar case reported in November 2024, Franklin Nwadialo, an elected chairman of Ogbaru Local Government Area in Anambra State, was arrested in Texas for allegedly running a $3.3 million romance scam. Nwadialo was indicted on a 14-count charge and faces a potential 20-year sentence if convicted.
Authorities say the sentence handed to Nwadavid sends a strong message to international fraud networks that U.S. law enforcement will aggressively pursue and prosecute cross-border financial crimes.
$2m fraud: Nigerian businessman sentenced to two years in US prison, faces deportation