NJ Man Participated In $2.1M Online Romance Scheme: Feds

A South Jersey man has been arrested on charges that he worked with a group of residents from Ghana engaged in an online romance scheme in which they tricked 30 people into wiring them a total of $2.1 million, U.S. Attorney Craig Carpenito announced. One of the 30 alleged victims took her own life after being tricked into wiring more than $93,000 as part of the scheme.

Rubbin Sarpong, 35, of Millville, is charged by complaint with one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud against people in New Jersey and elsewhere that he met through online dating sites, authorities announced on Wednesday.

Sarpong, who was born in Ghana but is a legal resident of the United States, was part of a conspiracy in which he and others portrayed themselves as U.S. military personnel serving in Syria in order to defraud the alleged victims between January 2016 and Sept. 3, 2019, according to documents filed in the case and statements made in court.

They set up dating profiles on various sites, using fake or stolen identities and pretended to strike up romantic relationships with the people they met online, authorities said.

After establishing these relationships through the websites and through email, they asked for money, often saying they would use it to ship gold bars they received, recovered or were awarded during combat to the United States, authorities said.

They promised the alleged victims they would return the money once the gold bars were received in the United States, authorities said.

In one incident that began in May 2018, Sarpong told an alleged victim he was awarded a box of gold bars worth more than $12 million, authorities said. The woman wired him $93,710, according to the complaint. One of the co-conspirators posed as a diplomat and provided fraudulent documents to support the story, authorities said.

On June 13, 2018, she had told her daughter she was going to meet the diplomat at the airport, where he would be arriving with the shipment of gold. The following day, she was found deceased, according to the complaint.

The conspirators used myriad email accounts and Voice Over Internet Protocol phone numbers to tell the alleged victims where to wire money, including recipient names, addresses, financial institutions, and account numbers, authorities said.

The money was wired to bank accounts in the United States that were set up and controlled by Sarpong, authorities said.

Occasionally, the alleged victims also mailed personal checks and/or cashier’s checks to the conspirators and also transferred money to the conspirators via money transfer services, such as Western Union and MoneyGram, according to authorities. The conspirators then cashed those checks, authorities said.

Sarpong personally received $823,386 in victim funds into bank accounts that he owned or controlled, authorities alleged. Sarpong posted photographs of himself on social media posing with large amounts of cash, high-end cars and expensive jewelry, authorities said.

If convicted, Sarpong faces a maximum of 20 years in prison and a $250,000 fine.