What happened
The Seventh Circuit affirmed a ruling allowing federal prosecutors in Illinois to proceed against Babajide Adefusi, rejecting his argument that a 2018 plea agreement with prosecutors in Texas barred a later wire fraud conspiracy case.
The panel held that the Southern District of Texas agreement did not protect Adefusi from prosecution by the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Central District of Illinois, even though the two cases had some factual overlap. Writing for the court, Circuit Judge Candace Jackson-Akiwumi Pryor said Paragraph 11's text was unequivocal: the agreement "plea agreement binds only" the Southern District of Texas office and "does not bind any other United States Attorney."
Adefusi had pleaded guilty in Texas to aiding and abetting passport fraud after prosecutors said he used counterfeit passports to open bank accounts that received proceeds from internet scams. The Texas plea agreement included a promise not to pursue additional charges arising out of the passport fraud scheme, but another provision said the agreement bound only the Southern District of Texas U.S. Attorney's Office.
In 2023, a federal grand jury in the Central District of Illinois charged Adefusi and others with conspiring to defraud E-MedRx, a Springfield pharmacy services and billing company. The indictment alleged that conspirators induced E-MedRx to send funds intended for pharmacies to accounts they controlled, causing $365,467.75 in wire transfers.
Adefusi moved to dismiss, arguing that the Texas agreement's reference to the United States barred the Illinois prosecution because the charged conduct arose from the earlier scheme. The district court disagreed, Adefusi entered a conditional guilty plea preserving the issue for appeal, and he was sentenced to 24 months in prison.
The Seventh Circuit said plea agreements are interpreted under contract principles, with the government held to the agreement's literal terms. Reading the Texas agreement as a whole, the panel concluded that the only reasonable interpretation was that the agreement limited only the Southern District of Texas office, not every federal prosecutor.
The court also rejected Adefusi's argument that different wording in two provisions created separate nonprosecution promises. Accepting that reading, the panel said, would make the agreement's office-specific limitation meaningless.
The panel acknowledged a long-running circuit split over how courts should treat ambiguous plea-agreement references to the United States or the government, but said the issue was not controlling here because this agreement was unambiguous. The court therefore affirmed the denial of Adefusi's motion to dismiss.