TUCSON, Ariz. — Editor's Note: The above video is from an earlier broadcast.
A Georgia man has been sentenced to nearly 11 years in prison for his role in an international romance fraud scheme that involved swindling money out of users of the "Words with Friends" game, according to authorities in Arizona.
Federal prosecutors announced Thursday that 47-year-old Onovughe Ighorhiohwunu, of Kennesaw, received a 130-month prison term last week for conspiracy to commit money laundering.
Ighorhiohwunu was previously convicted by a federal jury of conspiring to launder more than $1.3 million in proceeds obtained from victims of the internet fraud.
Prosecutors said that between July 2019 and May 2020, Ighorhiohwunu participated in a scheme where conspirators with connections to Nigeria used fictitious or assumed online identities to meet victims in the U.S. and get money from them.
Court records show the first victim in the case was a 77-year-old woman in southern Arizona who lost more than $100,000 in the romance scam.
The Arizona woman told investigators she started corresponding with someone she met on the Words with Friends app who asked her for money he could use to travel to Arizona and visit her.
It was a lonely time during the victim's life, she told investigators, because she had recently placed her husband in a nursing home due to his dementia.
The Arizona woman was instructed by her online friend to send money by purchasing gift cards, using money transfer services, and mailing packages full of money.
Another woman in California told investigators she befriended a German man through Words with Friends in 2017 who asked for money to recover from a workplace injury. She ended up losing $500,000 in the romance scam, court records show.
Prosecutors said Ighorhiohwunu was paid to help launder money collected by the online scammers. At least four of the victims were instructed to send large sums of money to a company in Georgia owned by Ighorhiohwunu.
"The Defendant’s role in the conspiracy was to collect money from romance fraud victims, via wires and the mail, using his Georgia companies and company bank accounts, and then to launder the fraudulent proceeds," prosecutors wrote in a sentencing memo.
As part of his sentence, Ighorhiohwunu was fined $25,000 and ordered to pay full restitution.
"Defendant’s motivation for this crime was simply greed. He used the victims’ monies to support himself, and he used the romance scam as a substitute for an honest living," prosecutors stated.
The FBI investigated the case that was prosecuted by the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Tucson.
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