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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