The Adetunji Abudu Rhode Island indictment finally has a defendant in custody. On a Monday night in October, Abudu, a 34-year-old from Lagos, Nigeria, tried to re-enter the United States at Boston’s Logan International Airport on a trip from Istanbul, and federal authorities arrested him there, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Rhode Island. On October 21, 2026, a federal judge in Providence ordered him detained until trial.
He is the sixth and last defendant in a money laundering case that dates back to 2019, and the only one of the six who left the country after the FBI came to his door. The other five have already pleaded guilty. Prosecutors say the group helped launder millions of dollars taken from elderly Americans through romance scams, fake sweepstakes, phony rental listings and bogus shipping fees. As with every indictment, these are allegations. Abudu is presumed innocent unless a court finds otherwise.
The Adetunji Abudu case at a glance
| Detail | What the Justice Department says |
|---|---|
| Defendant | Adetunji Abudu, 34, of Lagos, Nigeria; formerly of North Providence, Rhode Island |
| Arrested | A Monday night at Logan Airport in Boston, returning from Istanbul, Turkey |
| First court appearance | October 21, 2026, U.S. District Court in Rhode Island |
| Court order | Detained pending trial |
| Charges | Money laundering conspiracy and money laundering, in a superseding indictment returned in August 2020 |
| Co-defendants | Five, all of whom pleaded guilty; sentences ranged from time served to 42 months |
| Prosecutor | Assistant U.S. Attorney John P. McAdams |
| Investigators | FBI, with the U.S. Postal Inspection Service and police departments in Tallmadge, Ohio, and Moscow, Idaho |
How the arrest at Logan Airport unfolded
The public account is thin, and almost all of it comes from one press release. The U.S. Attorney’s Office says Abudu was arrested on a Monday night at Logan as he tried to re-enter the country from Istanbul. The release went out on Monday, October 26, but it puts his first court appearance on Wednesday, October 21. That points to an arrest on the Monday before, October 19, though the office has not stated the date, so treat it as an inference.
What the release leaves out is a long list. It does not say which airline he flew, how long he meant to stay, why he came back after years away, or how investigators knew he would be on that flight. Anyone hoping for a scene on the jet bridge will have to wait for court records, if they ever surface.
Once in custody, Abudu was brought before a federal judge in Rhode Island, where the case has been pending since 2020. The court ordered him detained pending trial, which in practice means he stays in federal custody while the case goes forward instead of being released on bail. The release does not describe the judge’s reasoning.
Inside the indictment: four schemes and one money trail
According to the 2020 announcement of the superseding indictment, dozens of victims across the country were targeted in four main ways. Some were befriended on social media and dating sites by people pretending to be romantically interested, then persuaded to send money for a supposed business venture or a debt. Others were told they had won a sweepstakes but had to pay upfront before the prize could be released. A third group paid rent to people who claimed to own properties they did not own or control. A fourth paid shipping costs on items sold online that never arrived as described.
The money then had to go somewhere. Prosecutors say victims were told to wire cash into bank accounts, or to mail cash and money orders to addresses in Rhode Island controlled by the scammers. From there, the allegation goes, the funds were moved through several banks and businesses in Rhode Island, Idaho and other places to hide where they came from and where they were going. Much of it ended up in Nigeria. Some of the cash was also used to buy vehicles that were shipped there.
That is why the charges read the way they do. Abudu and his co-defendants are charged with money laundering conspiracy and money laundering, which centers on moving and disguising the proceeds rather than on the original deceptions themselves. The scams are alleged to have been run from Nigeria; the people in Rhode Island and Idaho are accused of handling the cash.
The case drew an unusually wide net. The FBI led it with the U.S. Postal Inspection Service, and the Tallmadge, Ohio, and Moscow, Idaho, police departments played a major part after victims first called their local police. At the time, then-U.S. Attorney Aaron Weisman said nearly two dozen law enforcement agencies had worked together to identify the group. The head of the FBI’s Boston office, Joseph Bonavolonta, used the announcement to remind the public to be skeptical of any stranger offering a deal that sounds too good to be true.
Who else was charged, and what happened to them
The indictment named six people in all. Besides Abudu, they are Dotun Olawale Alonge, Oluwaseyi Akintola, Samson Ikotun, Olabode Shaba and Oladipupu Shodipo. The Justice Department says all five have since pleaded guilty to money laundering conspiracy, with sentences running from time served to 42 months in prison.
The 2020 announcement gives a sense of where each stood at that point. Shodipo had just been arrested and was released on an unsecured bond. Ikotun was already in federal custody awaiting trial, and Shaba was on home detention. Arrest warrants were outstanding for Abudu, Alonge and Akintola. The releases do not say how Alonge and Akintola eventually came into the system, only that they pleaded guilty along with the others. Names are spelled slightly differently between the 2020 and 2026 releases; this article follows the 2020 spellings.
From a 2019 search to a 2026 arrest
| Date | What happened |
|---|---|
| October 26, 2026 | The U.S. Attorney’s Office announces the arrest and the detention order |
| October 21, 2026 | Abudu appears in U.S. District Court in Rhode Island and is ordered detained pending trial |
| A Monday night, likely October 19, 2026 | Abudu is arrested at Logan Airport arriving from Istanbul (date inferred, not stated) |
| Between 2020 and 2026 | The five co-defendants plead guilty; sentences run from time served to 42 months (dates not given) |
| Late August 2020 | A grand jury returns the superseding indictment against six people; warrants are issued for Abudu, Alonge and Akintola |
| 2019 | The FBI carries out a court-authorized search of Abudu’s North Providence residence; he leaves for Nigeria |
The gap in the middle is the story. For roughly seven years, Abudu was outside the reach of the Rhode Island court while his five co-defendants worked through theirs. Some Nigerian outlets have described it as six years and others as seven; counting from the 2019 search to the 2026 arrest, seven is closer.
One small oddity is worth flagging. The Justice Department gave Abudu’s age as 34 in its August 2020 release and gives it as 34 again in 2026. Six years apart, both cannot be exact, and one is probably carried over. Court filings should settle it.
A detention order is a decision about custody, not about guilt. The Justice Department repeats its standard line in both announcements: a federal indictment is only an accusation, and a defendant is presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty. Nothing in the public record yet tells us how Abudu will respond to the charges.
The 2026 release gives no trial date and no date for a hearing on the superseding indictment. It does show that the same prosecutor, Assistant U.S. Attorney John P. McAdams, who handled the case in 2020 is still on it. Five of the six defendants resolved their cases with guilty pleas, but that tells us about them, not about him. The next filings in the Rhode Island federal docket will be the first real window into what happens from here.
