Woman who received messges of love on dating website 'duped out of £174,000'
Vulnerable women were conned out of £220,000, including £170,000 from one victim, by a conspiracy which targeted single women looking for love on an internet dating site, a court has heard.
The victims were duped after they responded to a false profile of an “attractive middle-aged man” on the match.com website.
Once the relationship developed, the conspirators would start requesting money.
Simon Edwards, prosecuting, told a jury at Winchester Crown Court, that they created a tale that the fake man, normally called James Richards, was due to receive a £100m inheritance from his father but this was tied up by bureaucracy in India.
He said that at first the women would be asked for a £700 legal fee by a fake solicitor and then the sums requested to help release the money increased from £10,000 to an “astonishing” £100,000.
Mr Edwards said that one woman handed over a total of £174,000 while some victims realised it was a scam and did not pay any money.
Brooke Boston (aged 28) of Common Lane, Titchfield, Hampshire, and Eberechi Ekpo (aged 26) of Adair Road, Southsea, both deny charges of conspiracy to defraud and money laundering.
Monty Emu (aged 28) of Adair Road, Southsea, and Adewunmi Nusi (aged 27) of Bomford Close, Hermitage, Berkshire, both deny money laundering.
The jury was told that Emmanuel Oko (aged 29) of Waverley Grove, Southsea, has pleaded guilty to conspiracy to defraud and money laundering and Chukwuka Ugwu (aged 28) of Somers Road, Southsea, has pleaded guilty to money laundering.
Mr Edwards said that the conspirators would begin by sending messages of love and “overblown affection” to the victims through the match.com website before moving on to emails and text messages.
Examples of the messages sent to multiple recipients included: “You make me feel loved, you make me feel safe, most importantly you make me feel wanted.
“I knew our friendship would grow from the first day we spoke but neither one of us could imagine the love exploding, no thundering into our hearts.”
Another read: “Honey, seriously I love you because I have never been loved by anyone like you loved me.
“I feel like a complete man. The thought of your hands on my body, particularly when you hold me when I am sleeping.
“I love your generous kindness to me. I love your eye and lips, your sense of self-love.
“I want to be with you now.”
Mr Edwards said once contact had developed, the conspirators would move away from match.com to emails.
He said: “They were then safe to ask what they really wanted to ask these victims and this was not for their love but their money.”
Mr Edwards explained that the “entirely fictitious” inheritance would be backed up with fake documents, many of which had spelling mistakes such as “starling” instead of sterling and a passport which had the forename and Christian names in the wrong places.
He said the conspirators invented a fake solicitor called Rod Thompson of Quality Solicitors who was involved in the correspondence and the victims were even sent a forged e-business card from him.
He said that Quality Solicitors was a real firm whose name was being use without its knowing, but Thompson had been invented.
Mr Edwards explained that the demands were backed up by forged affidavits and other documents.
He said that the money was paid to the bank account of a man who had not been traced before being transferred to the defendants’ bank accounts and moved around to help hide it.
Mr Edwards said that much of the money was taken out of cash machines in Portsmouth where five of the defendants lived at the time.
He added: “Most of the defendants didn’t have a regular or substantial income although they appeared to have lived quite comfortably, we say, on the proceeds of the conspiracy.”
