A Nigerian man who scammed hundreds of lonely U.S. women online was on
Thursday, February 2, sentenced to 27 years in federal prison and
ordered to repay $1.7 million, by U.S. District Judge David Herndon.
Olayinka Ilumsa Sunmola bilked dozens of women in Missouri and Illinois
alone, driving some to bankruptcy and at least one to the brink of
suicide, prosecutors said.
Sunmola and others would pretend to be members of the
U.S. military stationed overseas or businessmen working there, some of
whom were widowers with children.
They used pictures of men in uniform they found online, sometimes lifting pictures of dead servicemen from memorial websites.
They wooed their "soul mates" via emails, instant messages, flowers,
candy and other gifts. Some of the women bought wedding gowns or began
to use the fake last names that Sunmola and the others were using. The
scammers then began to concoct emergencies that grew ever larger until
their victims' assets were gone, prosecutors said.
One Bond County, Ill. woman bankrupted herself buying electronics and
shipping them to Sunmola, re-shipping things he bought using stolen
credit card numbers and taking out cash advances on a credit card.
A woman identified in court last year only as Jane Doe No. 6 was a
recently divorced single mother when she met Sunmola, who was claiming
to be a U.S. Army major. She is also partially disabled and a survivor
of an abusive relationship.
Sunmola's victims didn't know that credit cards and checks he sent to
them were bogus, and that the electronic items were fraudulently
purchased. Sometimes victims would be tricked a second time, when
contacted by fake foreign “investigators” who demanded thousands of
dollars in customs payments to send back items they claimed to have
seized.
Sunmola persuaded some victims to send sexually explicit photos or
videos, then used them for blackmail. In one case, Sunmola shared the
pictures with a victim's relatives even after she paid him, prosecutors
said.
While "systematically destroying" the women, Sunmola used their money
for lavish parties, two Range Rovers, four properties in South Africa
and a $363,000 home in Nigeria, prosecutors said.
After two days of a jury trial in U.S. District Court in East St. Louis
in March, Sunmola pleaded guilty to eight felonies, including mail
fraud, wire fraud, conspiracy, and interstate extortion.
Sunmola was arrested in 2014 as he was preparing to board a British Airlines flight from Heathrow Airport to Johannesburg.
The U.S. attorney’s office in Southern Illinois worked with the U.S. Postal Inspection Service, Homeland Security Investigations, the
U.S. Secret Service and the Illinois attorney general’s office, which
referred the case to prosecutors.
Source: St. Louis Post-Dispatch
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