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Mahmoud Bowler, 40, of Newark, and an unidentified co-conspirator whom he grew up with in Ghana double-teamed the Florida victim over the course of nearly three years after connecting with her on an online dating site using a bogus profile name.
Bowler then turned around and screwed his partner, keeping the majority of the money that they'd collected from the victim, U.S. Attorney for New Jersey Phillip R. Sellinger said.
The woman believed Bowler's associate when he told her he'd been awarded a $47 million contract to design, construct and install an offshore platform related to gas and oil facilities, federal authorities said.
He went to complaint that his bank accounts were frozen by a government agency and now he needed money, they said.
Bowler even texted her a bogus document as proof.
The woman ended up wiring $65,950 in four separate transfers -- including a final $58,000 -- to a bank account that he controlled, Sellinger said.
Bowler had taken a cut of 10% to 20% from the first three transfers, the U.S. attorney said. He kept the entire 58 grand from the last one, Sellinger said.
Bowler later told an undercover investigator that the point of the scam was to charm a “filthy rich woman,” according to an FBI complaint on file in U.S. District Court in Newark.
Pocketing the entire final transfer was simply “a thief stealing from a thief,” the complaint quotes him as saying.
Bowler rejected a plea offer and took his chances with a jury that convicted him of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and four counts of wire fraud following a four-day trial in April.
Bowler must serve just about all of the two years and three months that U.S. District Judge Brian R. Martinotti sentenced him to because there's no parole in the federal prison system.
The judge also ordered Bowler to pay restitution of $44,821.
Sellinger credited special agents of the FBI's Newark Division, detectives from the New York City Police Department Intelligence and Counterterrorism Unit, detectives from the Essex County Prosecutor’s Office and from the Port Authority Police Department with the investigation leading to the conviction and sentencing secured by Assistant U.S. Attorney Thomas S. Kearney of his Special Prosecutions Division and Assistant U.S. Attorney Dong Joo Lee of his Criminal Division.
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