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.