Police warn of “sweetheart scams” in North Texas

A multinational romance rip-off concentrating on aged people throughout the U.S. had ties to North Texas, authorities say.

Driving the information: The Nigerian group’s chief, Ifeanyichukwu Obi of Grand Prairie, was not too long ago sentenced to twenty years in jail for participating in organized prison exercise and theft of property over $300,000.

• Obi’s court docket listening to revealed his connection to callers in Nigeria who rip-off the aged into sending cash to their on-line love curiosity.
• Authorities say three different North Texans have been indicted within the case for participating in prison exercise and property theft.

Why it issues: Final yr, the FBI acquired greater than 19,000 complaints about confidence and romance scams with reported losses of just about $740 million.

The massive image: The Yahoo Boys are accused of concentrating on dozens of individuals throughout the nation and laundering their cash to Nigeria, the Tarrant County district lawyer’s workplace mentioned.

Particulars: Colleyville police started investigating the Yahoo Boys in 2019, when a UPS retailer reported that an aged buyer was delivery quite a few packages of money to totally different addresses, Colleyville Police chief Michael Miller tells Axios.

• “This group was concerned in romance scams, lottery scams, small enterprise administration, COVID fraud, enterprise e-mail compromise — just about you identify it, they have been concerned in it,” Miller says.
• Obi, who was residing in Grand Prairie on the time, despatched $1.3 million in stolen cash to folks in Nigeria over a two-month span in 2019, per the district lawyer’s workplace.

Zoom in: One of many victims, a 70-year-old widow, informed FOX4 {that a} man talked to her for weeks and “pulled each coronary heart string” to steer her to mortgage him cash, swindling her out of $75,000.

• “I fell for it. It is embarrassing. I am not a silly particular person, however consider me, they have their act collectively,” mentioned the lady, who requested the station that she not be recognized. “It was such an enormous deal that I even had my church women praying for it.”

In the meantime: Colleyville has had an uptick in “grandson scams” during which scammers name aged residents to say their grandchild is in jail and must be bailed out, Miller tells Axios.

• He says Colleyville police investigated three scams a couple of months in the past involving individuals who befriended youngsters on social media platforms, tricked them into sending specific photographs of themselves and blackmailed them for cash.

The underside line: “On the finish of the day, you must be suspicious if all the pieces you find out about this particular person is simply via some social media channel. The instruments are so good now, they might make something look legit,” Miller tells Axios.

Be sensible: The Senior Source, a Dallas-based advocacy group, has a webpage providing recommendations on easy methods to determine widespread scams.