U.S. court jails Nigerian building inspector Adebanjo Popoola six years for fraud

A Nigerian national, Adebanjo Popoola, has been sentenced to six years in prison and ordered to repay the $1.64 million he stole from programs meant to repair decrepit buildings in St. Louis.

U.S. District Judge Zachary Bluestone sentenced him on Tuesday. Mr Popoola pleaded guilty in June in U.S. District Court in St. Louis to three counts of wire fraud.

In a sentencing memo, assistant U.S. attorney Hal Goldsmith stated that Mr Popoola’s crime was “a case of greed, plain and simple”. He said the convict “abused his longstanding and substantial position of trust with the City of St. Louis in order to enrich himself and his family members”.

Mr Popoola, 58, was a building division inspector with the City of St. Louis and managed key aspects of two programmes designed to stabilise and rehabilitate city properties: Stable Communities STL and Prop NS.

Stable Communities STL was funded through federal American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) funds and was intended for privately owned properties. Prop NS was intended for residential properties owned by the City’s Land Reutilisation Authority (LRA) and was funded through general obligation bonds.

Mr Popoola was primarily responsible for identifying properties for rehab or stabilisation; developing the scope of work; seeking, reviewing, and awarding bids; inspecting the work purportedly completed on each property; and certifying that the work was complete so funds could be disbursed to the contractors.

Mr Popoola steered 41 contracts to Farst Construction LLC, a company he helped organise with his sister, a nurse living in Texas with no background or experience in construction. He directed 50 contracts to Premier Finish Contractors LLC, a company he helped his fiancée organise.

Mr Popoola “was so bold as to give 42% of the total funds disbursed under the City’s Stable Communities STL programme to his sister’s and his wife’s companies”, the memo stated.

The Nigerian-born building inspector concealed his role in the companies from the city, and his sister and his fiancée (later wife) concealed their connection to Mr Popoola. On multiple projects, Farst and Premier failed to perform the rehabilitation and stabilisation work for which the companies were paid. Still, Mr Popoola falsely certified that the work had been completed properly.

Mr Popoola and his family members reaped $1,642,908 from the scheme. He spent the stolen money on residential mortgage payments, multiple vehicle purchases and repairs, travel expenses, his September 2023 wedding in Hawaii, casino gambling and other dining and entertainment expenses.

The owner of a building on Rowan Avenue in the Hamilton Heights neighbourhood wrote in a victim impact statement to the court that Mr Popoola’s theft of $48,500 in repair funds left a building “with severe, unaddressed structural decay that was actively masked by fraudulent building inspection reports… imposing an immense, unexpected financial burden on me as an independent developer”.

St. Louis Mayor Cara Spencer said in her own statement that the city might have to return millions of dollars in ARPA funds because of Mr Popoola’s crimes.

Innocent contractors were harmed when the city froze payments during the investigation, which also halted other stabilisation work, including buildings damaged by the May 2025 tornado, a statement by the Department of Justice noted.

“As a building inspector, Banjo Popoola stole more than $1.64 million in taxpayer dollars intended to stabilise and rebuild St. Louis neighbourhoods. While families were left living next to deteriorating and unsafe buildings, he diverted those funds to finance his Hawaiian wedding, pay his mortgage, and cover personal expenses,” said special agent in charge Chris Crocker of the FBI St. Louis Division.