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Martins Inalegwu, 34, of Philadelphia and Steincy Mathieu, 26, of Brooklyn cooked up the plot with Moses Chukwuebuka Alexander and several of his Nigerian brethren, an indictment returned by a federal grand jury alleges.
Together, they trolled online dating and social media sites for willing marks, whom they “wooed with words of love” on the phone and in emails, U.S. Attorney for New Jersey Philip R. Sellinger said.
Then they asked for money.
The victims, believing the imposters’ tales of financial woe, ended up sending dough for security deposits or application fees on apartments that the pretenders didn’t own, the U.S. attorney said.
They never heard from the con artists again, he said.
“Conspirators used myriad email accounts and phone numbers to communicate with the victims and instruct them on where to wire the money, including recipient names, addresses, financial institutions and account numbers,” Sellinger said Thursday, April 13.
“Victims wired money to bank accounts held by Inalegwu and Mathieu in the United States and also mailed checks directly to Inalegwu and Mathieu,” the U.S. attorney noted.
“Some victims transferred money to the conspirators via money transfer services, such as Western Union or MoneyGram, and others wired money to bank accounts held by conspirators overseas,” he added.
The defendants spent a chunk of the $4.5 million on themselves, the indictment returned in U.S. District Court in Camden says.
They also withdrew some of it in cash and transferred some of it either to other bank accounts that they personally controlled or to Alexander and other confederates in Nigeria and Turkey, it says.
Inalegwu also allegedly used an unlicensed money-transmitting business run by a fourth defendant, Oluwaseyi Fatolu, of Springfield, NJ, to send fat stacks to Nigeria.
Fatolu operated a “hawala system,” directing Inalegwu and others to deposit money into her bank accounts and the accounts of her associates in the United States for a fee, Sellinger said.
The money they laundered then landed in bank accounts overseas, the U.S. attorney said.
This went on for four years, he said.
Inalegwu, Mathieu and Alexander are charged with conspiracy to commit mail and wire fraud, wire fraud, mail fraud, conspiracy to commit money laundering, money laundering, transacting in criminal proceeds and tax evasion.
Fatolu, meanwhile, is charged with conducting an unlawful money-transmitting business. A federal judge ordered her held during an arraignment in Camden on Wednesday, April 12.
Inalegwu and Mathieu, formerly of Burlington County, are scheduled for arraignments there on April 20, Sellinger said. Alexander remained at large, he said.
Sellinger credited special agents of the Atlantic City Resident Agency of the FBI’s Newark Division, special agents of the Department of Homeland Security’s Homeland Security Investigations in Newark, special agents of IRS-Criminal Investigation, postal inspectors with the U.S. Postal Inspection Service in Newark and special agents from his own office with the investigation leading to the charges.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Martha K. Nye of Sellinger’s Criminal Division in Trenton is handling the case for the government.
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