LA lawyer sentenced to federal prison for taking $2.1M bribe

LOS ANGELES (KESQ) - A Los Angeles-area lawyer was sentenced today to seven years, three months in federal prison for receiving a $2.1 million bribe while serving as an officer of Nigeria's state-owned oil company in connection with negotiating favorable drilling rights for a subsidiary of a Chinese state-owned oil company.

Paulinus Okoronkwo, 58, also known as ``Pollie,'' was sentenced by U.S. District Judge John F. Walter, who ordered him to pay $923,824 in restitution to the Internal Revenue Service and ordered that Okoronkwo forfeit over $1 million, the net proceeds of the sale of a Valencia home involved in the laundering of the bribe money.   

At the conclusion of a four-day trial, a jury in downtown Los Angeles in August 2025 found Okoronkwo guilty of three counts of transactional money laundering, one count of tax evasion, and one count of obstruction of justice.   

A dual citizen of the United States and Nigeria who practiced immigration, family, and personal injury law out of an office in Koreatown, Okoronkwo was a foreign official who served as the general manager of the
upstream division of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corp, federal prosecutors said.  

The NNPC is a state-owned company through which Nigeria's government developed that nation's fossil fuel and natural gas reserves, including through partnerships with foreign oil companies. In this role, Okoronkwo owed a fiduciary duty to the Nigerian government and was a public official, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office.   

To conceal the scheme, Addax Petroleum, a Switzerland-based subsidiary of a Chinese state-owned petroleum, gas and petrochemical conglomerate, falsely characterized the $2.1 million payment as a payment for legal services, lied to an auditor about the payment, and fired executives who questioned the payment's propriety, prosecutors said.  

To create the false impression that the bribe payment constitutedclient funds, Okoronkwo received the payment in his law firm's trust account, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office.

After receiving the bribe into his trust account, Okoronkwo routed funds to a company called IPO Capital LLC. From there, Okoronkwo used the bribery funds to pay for family expenses, a car, and a home. Specifically, in November 2017, Okoronkwo used $983,200 of the illegally obtained funds to make down payments on a house in Valencia, prosecutors said.  

Okoronkwo also omitted the $2.1 million bribe payment from his 2015 federal income tax return, prosecutors said. He also obstructed justice in June 2022 when he lied to federal investigators when he told them he did not use any of the $2.1 million to purchase a house and that the money represented client funds rather than income to his law office, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office.  

In January, the State Bar of California suspended Okoronkwo's law license, prosecutors said.