British woman duped of £1.6m by Nigerian fraudster she met on an online dating site
A west London woman was tricked into transferring large sum of money
to a Nigerian gang of fraudsters after one of them told her he loved
her. Ife Ojo,31, and Olusegun Agbaje,43, were due to be sentenced today, Friday, November 27, in connection with the scam
in which the woman who is in her 40s handed over increasingly large sums
of money to the man and his “associates”over a period of 10 months
last year.
Ojo, who claimed to be studying at the London School
of Business and Finance, and Agbaje, an NHS admin
assistant of Hornchurch, Essex, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to defraud
at an earlier hearing.
Detectives believe they were part of a wider romance fraud gang –
many of them based overseas – who target lone and vulnerable women on
the Internet.
On their arrest police found a laptop containing records of
conversations between the woman and the man called Anderson and a copy
of The Game, a bestselling book on the art of seduction.
Detective Chief Inspector Gary Miles, of the Met’s FALCON cyber crime and fraud task force, said:
"This is a growing problem, in recent months we have seen an increase in reports of romance fraud."
"Within the past year Falcon officers have investigated the loss of more
than £4 million in relation to about 100 victims. These victims were
ruthlessly manipulated by men and women pretending to love them."
The suspects showered them with compliments and confided their
seemingly innermost secrets to them. In many cases suspects were talking
to victims online or over the phone for hours every day.
In the latest case the woman, from Hillingdon, told police she had
met a man called Christian Anderson on a dating website in February last
year.
Unusually, they met in person after a couple of weeks when he told
her he was an engineer working in the oil industry and was divorced.
As the relationship continued he convinced the woman he loved her but
said that he needed a loan of £30,000 for equipment for an engineering
project in Benin, Africa.
The woman paid the cash and handed over further sums in a series of
increasingly elaborate requests by the man who convinced her they would
soon be living together.
At one stage the victim began house hunting for them and even travelled to Amsterdam to meet an associate.
The woman told detectives she often doubted the man’s authenticity
but every time she asked for proof he sent convincing but false
documentation.
DCI Miles said:
"Victims of this fraud must understand they are not
foolish and they are not alone. These fraudsters go to great lengths to
convince their victim. But these victims are not gullible, the fraudsters are very
professional, often they are talking from carefully prepared scripts."
Police advise that people should never send money abroad to people
they have not met or do not know well, question people’s stories and
talk to friends about the relationships.
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