Indiana men sentenced in Marfa real estate wire fraud scheme

Indiana men sentenced in Marfa real estate wire fraud scheme

ALPINE — At the end of August, two men from Indiana were convicted of carrying out a wire fraud scheme targeting two victims: the prospective buyer of a property in Marfa and an escrow agent in Alpine. Titus Akindamini and Chidinma Akinyele were sentenced by Judge David Counts to 10 months and six months imprisonment, respectively. They will both also serve three years of supervised release and owe equal shares in court-ordered restitution of $60,000. 

Akindamini and Akinyele were indicted by a grand jury in December 2024. Per court documents, the trouble began four years earlier, between December 2020 and January 2021, when an unidentified “Victim 1” attempted to purchase property in Marfa with the help of unidentified “Victim 2,” an escrow agent in Alpine. 

Sometime in December of that year, the email account of an employee of Victim 2 was breached and the digital intruders were able to access a chain of emails about the potential transaction. The scammers sent an email to the buyer, instructing them to transfer $60,000 by wire to an account at Fifth Third Bank in Indianapolis. 

The buyer complied on December 16, and for the rest of the month Akinyele and Akindamini made withdrawals from the transferred money. The unnamed Victim 2 never received any of the money they were owed. It took a few weeks for Victim 2 to notice that the fishy email had been sent — by which time the damage had been done. 

The grand jury indicted Akindamini and Akinyele who were initially both charged with “conspiracy to commit wire fraud” in addition to “aiding and abetting wire fraud,” all felonies. The conspiracy charges were later dismissed with prejudice. 

According to the National Association of Realtors (NAR), real estate transactions are “a perfect storm” for fraud, because listing data is easily accessible and high-stakes communications largely take place over email and text. As technologies like artificial intelligence take off, scammers’ ability to impersonate potential victims grows more sophisticated by the day.

Numbers suggest that rates of these crimes are increasing. In 2020, nearly 14,000 people nationwide were victims of wire fraud, with losses estimated at more than $213 million. The NAR describes the type of scam run by Akindamini and Akinyele as “business email compromise,” a specific subset of this type of financial crime in which fraudsters gain access to an account and assume the identity of the agent to initiate a wire transfer.

The NAR offers a few tips to avoid this type of fraud: keep your operating system and security software up to date, and be careful about opening attachments or downloading files from emails. Never email your financial information. If you have to give financial information out over the internet, make sure the site is secure. First-time buyers can be especially vulnerable to scams, so make sure to do your research and ask questions if a transaction feels off. 

Their most important tip? “Confirm all wiring instructions in person,” the NAR cautions. “It’s really important to always confirm by phone with a known number before transferring any funds.”