Tennessee man sentenced for conspiracy to defraud Fresno County

FRESNO, Calif. — Jafaar September Nyangoro, 53, of Franklin, Tennessee, was sentenced today by U.S. District Judge Jennifer L. Thurston to three years 10 months in prison and ordered to pay $1,178,000 in restitution for conspiracy to commit wire fraud related to a scheme to defraud Fresno County, U.S. Attorney Eric Grant announced. 

According to court documents, sometime before Sept. 14, 2020, Nyangoro, co‑defendant Peter Bah Acha, 46, of Berlin, Germany, and others secretly gained control of an email account used by the finance director of a Fresno nonprofit and used it to submit fraudulent invoices to Fresno County for payment through Automated Clearing House (ACH) transactions. Posing as the finance director, they fraudulently represented to the County of Fresno that the nonprofit’s bank account information had changed and that payments should be sent to an account at a different bank that Nyangoro had recently opened. Believing that they were communicating with the legitimate nonprofit business, the county employees updated the nonprofit’s bank account information accordingly.

According to court documents, between Sept. 24, 2020, and Oct. 13, 2020, the County of Fresno initiated several ACH transfers totaling more than $1.5 million to Nyangoro’s bank account instead of the nonprofit’s bank account. At times, Nyangoro, Acha, and others communicated with each other through various means, including WhatsApp. For example, on Oct. 16, 2020, after Regions Bank reversed some of the ACH transfers for suspected fraud, Nyangoro sent a WhatsApp message: “We’re in deep s***. The last 3 transactions from County of Fresno have been reversed. Please call me ASAP! … There’s honor code among thieves. Let them tell us exactly what went wrong with these last 3 transactions.”

Nyangoro pleaded guilty on June 22, 2026, and has been in custody since his initial appearance on May 29, 2025.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation conducted the investigation. Assistant U.S. Attorney David L. Gappa prosecuted the case.