CLEVELAND, Ohio — A jury on Wednesday found a Nigerian man guilty of running an online marketplace that sold stolen bank account and credit card information, among other stolen personal information.
Blessing Adeleke, 31, remained stoic with his right hand clenching his left wrist as U.S. District Judge James Gwin read the jury’s guilty verdicts on 17 charges, including conspiring to commit bank fraud and bank fraud.
Gwin set Adeleke’s sentencing for Jan. 18. Adeleke faces up to 30 years in prison on the bank fraud charge. Defense attorney Michael Goldberg said he believes Adeleke will appeal the conviction.
“I’m disappointed,” Goldberg said after the hearing. “I thought there was reasonable doubt.”
Assistant U.S. attorneys Daniel Riedel and Brian Deckert declined comment after the verdict.
The jury deliberated about 90 minutes on Wednesday. Testimony in the trial in federal court in Cleveland lasted about six hours on Tuesday and featured four witnesses, including one victim and an FBI agent who began investigating the case in 2017 after receiving a tip from a private cybersecurity company.
A federal grand jury handed up an indictment against Adeleke in 2020, but the case remained sealed until June, when authorities arrested him in Ghana.
The jury found Adeleke is the man behind the online moniker “DetecteD” or “Detected Bits,” an online scammer who ran two websites from 2014 to 2016 that offered up a variety of people’s stolen information for money.
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