Cruel conman jailed for tricking consultant out of £350K

Jul 3 2009 by Kenny Barr, Dumfries Standard Friday

IT WAS an e-mail that was too good to be true.

For anyone willing to help a Nigerian transfer $300 million into a UK bank account they would receive up to half of the fortune.

But for leading consultant surgeon Fawzia Ashkanani the temptation was irresistible.

The breast cancer specialist remortgaged her house and borrowed thousands of pounds from friends and family to invest more than £350,000 in the get rich quick scheme which turned out to be an internet scam.

Nigerian conman Chinaenye Mokelu, 44, was jailed for five years for his part in the phishing spam e-mail which was said to have “ruined” the consultant’s life.

Describing the impact of the fraud on the surgeon at Dumfries Infirmary, Michael Fraser, prosecuting, told Basildon Crown Court: “She said how this whole episode has left her feeling upset with a huge feeling of guilt because she has let down members of her family and indeed close friends.

“She is struggling to cope with repaying the £210,000 remortgage.

“It has also had a profound psychological impact on her. She has considerable difficulty in relating and talking to her patients because this matter has caused her considerable embarrassment.”

The court was told “gullible” Miss Ashkanani saw the opportunity, presented when the e-mail landed in her inbox in August 2007, as a way to finance her dream of setting up clinics in the most deprived areas of Africa.

Mr Fraser said after making contact with the sender, she was asked to pay £4,500 to broker Mokelu, to enable the transfer of funds.

As part of the elaborate fraud, Kuwati-born Miss Ashkanani travelled twice to London to meet several of the gang of fraudsters – who have never been traced by police.

During one meeting in a Holiday Inn she was shown a suitcase full of fake $100 notes. In September 2007, Miss Ashkanani was told the sum of £210,000 was required to release the funds.

So desperate was she to get hold of the promised £75,000,000 reward she raised the amount by remortgaging her house.

The conmen even mocked up and dispatched a document which appeared to be a £150,000 transfer to her account purporting to be from US Citibank Group.

Then came a phone call demanding £750,000 in tax. When Miss Ashkanani said she could not find that amount, the court heard, she was told “raise as much as you can” and threatened with police investigation if she pulled out of the deal.

She convinced her brother to lend her more than £50,000 which was paid into a Lloyds bank account controlled by Mokelu.

The married father-of-two – whose wife and seven and 14-year-old daughters have returned to Nigeria – was arrested as he withdrew £20,000 in cash from the fraudulent account. When police searched his home in Grays, Essex, they found a suitcase full of fake cash and a counterfeit Nigerian passport.

They also found a mobile phone with Miss Ashkanani’s work, home and mobile numbers saved under the names “Miracle 1, Miracle 2 and Miracle 3”, the court was told.

During some 18 months, Miss Ashkanani handed over £352,937.

Mokelu was sentenced to a five-year jail term – four years for conspiracy to defraud and another year added on for using a fake Nigerian passport to set up a fraudulent bank account.

He is expected to be deported at the end of his sentence.

Woman conned out of $75,000 in cash and jewelry

Police are searching for two men they believe caught the woman in a confidence scheme. By SEAN EMERY THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER Comments | Recommend IRVINE – Authorities say two men scammed an Irvine woman out of $60,000 in cash and more than $16,000 in jewelry this week, promising her a profit in return for helping them access “inheritance” money in what police describe as one of the oldest cons in the book. Police believe the woman is a victim of what they refer to as a “pigeon drop,” a confidence scheme in which someone is convinced to give up cash or valuables in return for even greater sums of money. The woman was first approached by one of the men while leaving a restaurant in the 14000 block of Culver Drive at around 11 a.m. on Monday, police Lt. John Hare said. The man, who identified himself as “Mabue,” told the woman that a rich uncle had left him a conditional inheritance, which required that he make a donation to a charity, Hare said. He asked the woman to help him find a charity, Hare said, implying that she would get a piece of the inheritance in return. The woman took “Mabue” to a church in the 5000 block of Alton, Hare said, where she intended to talk to the priest about the charity donation. But shortly after they arrived, a second man, who identified himself as “Frank,” struck up a conversation with the two. “Frank” then left briefly and returned with what the woman believed to be a large sum of money, Hare said. The two men convinced the woman to help with their “donation” as well, Hare said, and she dropped them off at a shopping center parking lot as she drove home to pick up several thousands of dollars in cash and jewels. The woman picked the two men up, and drove them to her bank, the Downey Savings and Loan on Culver Drive and Walnut, where she took out more money while “Mabue” and “Frank” waited in the parking lot, Hare said. The woman gave the two men the $60,000 in cash and more than $16,000 worth of jewelry, Hare said. Once she handed over the money and jewels, the men asked her to drive around the parking lot one time as a “test of trust,” Hare said. The men were gone by the time she returned, Hare said. The woman went into the bank to report what happened, and employees called the police, Hare said. Police have released descriptions of both men. The man who identified himself as “Mabue” is described as being in his early 40s, 5 feet 6 inches tall, about 180 pounds, clean shaven with short hair and dark brown skin. He had a thick French accent. “Frank” was described as a black man in his early 50s, 6 feet tall, 180 pounds, clean shaven and curly black hair with a little gray in it. Confidence scams like the pigeon drop have gained a new notoriety in recent years, thanks to its more tech savvy equivalent, the “Nigerian E-mail” scam in which a “wealthy foreigner” asks victims for help moving a large sum of money from their homeland in return for a percentage of the cash. “Part of the problem with the Nigerian E-mail scam is that it is not tangible money right there in front of you,” police Det. Joe Monroe said. “It is a lot easier to delete an e-mail than walk away from someone in front of you with this great scheme. Unfortunately greed kind of takes over.” Unlike scams such as identity fraud which can require more people and expertise, confidence scams can be pulled of with less manpower, Monroe said. “This is a very basic, easy scam that two or three people can put together and pull off,” Monroe said. “The way a lot of crooks think is ‘more people, less cut.’” While the number of incidents are still relatively low – Hare could remember only a handful in the past few years – they can have a devastating financial impact on the victims. A 71-year-old Anaheim widow in January lost $5,332, her life savings, when a man asked her for help finding an attorney to interpret a letter he claimed said he won $200,000. As in the Irvine case, another man who police believe was in on the scam showed up to donate his own money, and once the woman turned over her share of the cash the men took off. The con artists often prey on elderly victims, Monroe said. When watching out for the scams, Monroe said the simplest advice is still the best. “They need to be cautious with any investment they make. Just don’t let greed overtake your common sense,” Monroe said. “If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.”

Coventry woman sentenced for mail fraud

01:00 AM EDT on Friday, April 24, 2009
By Katie Mulvaney

Journal Staff Writer
PROVIDENCE — A federal judge on Thursday sentenced a Coventry woman to a year in prison for

her role in a Nigerian mail-fraud scheme intended to target more than 900 victims.

Nancy Alexander, 67, wept as Chief U.S. Judge Mary M. Lisi gave her a sentence of one year

plus one day, and placed her under three years of supervision following her release. She was

ordered to undergo mental-health counseling, pay $9,420 in restitution, and was forbidden to

use the Internet without court approval upon her release.

“There’s no question in my mind that this defendant clearly understood what she was being

asked to do,” Lisi said in U.S. District Court. Alexander, she said, agreed to engage in a

scheme with an out-of-country mastermind in exchange for the promise of a $600 monthly

paycheck.

Using a cane and appearing feeble, Alexander apologized to her family. She cast herself as

the victim of a conniving scam artist who preyed on the vulnerable over the Internet. Her

lawyer, Mary S. McElroy, said Alexander was plagued by illness, financial troubles and

depression after her son’s death at the time the Nigerian wooed her into a false romance and

subsequent scam online.

“I didn’t realize how many people I hurt,” Alexander said, crying. “I couldn’t hurt anybody.

It’s just not in me.”

Alexander, of Victory Highway, had faced 37 to 46 months in prison under federal guidelines.

Prosecutor Lee H. Vilker had asked for 37 months, saying such schemes were increasingly a

blight on society and that the sentence should serve to deter other Americans from being

enlisted in similar conspiracies. Alexander sought one-day imprisonment and home confinement

with electronic monitoring in light of her age and health issues, including diabetes,

arthritis, depression and fibromyalgia.

Alexander in November pleaded guilty to one count of mail fraud involving about $1.6 million

in counterfeit checks and money orders, admitting she made fraudulent checks and forwarded

others that had been shipped to her from Nigeria.

According to a Secret Service affidavit, agents intercepted a parcel last April addressed to

Alexander that contained 119 counterfeit checks and money orders, prosecutors said. The

package originated in Nigeria and had been shipped through France.

Agents found that Alexander and her accomplices approached victims and intended victims in

several ways. For instance, they contacted one after she posted a résumé online; another had

advertised a pool heater for sale in a local newspaper; and a third was seeking a work-from

-home job. All were asked to cash checks sent to them of various amounts. They were

instructed to keep some of the money and wire the balance to other accounts, prosecutors

said.

All the checks turned out to be counterfeit and victims lost money they had wired back —

ranging from $2,000 to $5,000. Other targets either waited for the checks to clear — which

they did not — or did not respond at all. In all, Alexander successfully scammed $9,420,

though she received none of that money before her arrest last year, according court

statements.

Lisi referenced Alexander’s two-decade criminal history in sentencing her. Previous charges,

for which Alexander always received probation, included passing bad checks and most recently

stealing a coworker’s personal information and then using her credit card, Lisi said.

It is clear that leniency by previous judges did not deter her from engaging in the Nigerian

fraud and lending it the legitimacy of an American address, Lisi said. “She did it with her

eyes wide open.”

Alexander is scheduled to surrender voluntarily May 14.