Annandale man loses big in romance scam

A case involving a 78-year-old Annandale man who was scammed out of $580,000 by people pretending to have a relationship with him highlights the dangers of romance scams.

Victims of romance scams have lost a staggering $1.5 billion in the last five years, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) reports. That includes a record $547 million in 2021, which is six times the reported losses in 2017 and a nearly 80 percent jump from 2020.

Actual losses are likely much higher, as many victims are too embarrassed to file a police report.

Two of the people who scammed the Annandale man were sentenced in the U.S. District Court in Alexandria on Feb. 18. Linda Mbimadong was sentenced to 36 months in prison and her accomplice, Richard Broni, got a 19-month sentence. The two are Ghanian nationals who were living in New York City.

They had been convicted of wire and mail fraud last year as part of a social media scheme involving other co-conspirators.

According to the indictment issued last year, Mbimadong and Broni were working with a group of fraudsters who met the Annandale man on the iFlirt dating app in 2019.

The victim was looking for female companionship and was drawn into an online relationship with someone who posed as a widow in her 30s. A member of the conspiracy moved the conversations from iFlirt to Google Hangouts and text messages.

Eventually, WUSA reports, the “widow” told the victim she was arrested while traveling to Germany to pick up an inheritance of gold bars and needed money to make bail. The victim paid, then she claimed she was arrested again and needed more money.

According to the Washington Post, the Annandale man was a former foreign service officer with the U.S. Agency for International Development who had received awards for identifying waste, fraud, and abuse in the government. He was later diagnosed with dementia.

In addition to handing over more than $400,000 in cash, he spent $200,000 on Apple products, which were sold in Ghana.

Mbimadong, age 29, and Broni, 31, were described by prosecutors as low-level “money mules” who never made contact with the victims. They helped retrieve cashier’s checks and wires from the victims and laundered the money in return for a cut of the proceeds, WUSA reports.

Prosecutors estimate the scam took in more than $42 million from multiple victims.

Some of the victims zeroed out their retirement savings, maxed out their credit cards, and took out home equity loans to help their “romantic partners.”

Romance scammers create fake online profiles with attractive photos swiped from the internet, the FTC states. They study the information potential victims posted online and pretend to have common interests. But they always have an excuse for avoiding an in-person meeting, such as by claiming to be serving overseas in the military or working on an offshore oil rig.

While many romance scams start on dating apps, more than a third of victims in 2021 say they met the scammer on Facebook or Instagram. A growing trend in 2021, the FTC found, is scammers getting victims to “invest” in cryptocurrency or foreign exchange trading.

The FTC offers the following advice to prevent becoming a victim of a romance scam:

• Never send or forward money to someone you haven’t met in person.
• Nobody legit will ever ask you to send cryptocurrency, provide the numbers on a gift card, or wire money.
• Talk to friends or family about a new love interest and pay attention if they’re concerned.
• Try a reverse-image search of profile pictures. If the details don’t match up, it’s a scam.
• Report suspicious profiles or messages to the dating app or social media platform and file a fraud report with the FTC.
• Learn more about romance scams here.