PRINCE GEORGE’S COUNTY, MD — A 29-year-old Beltsville man has been sentenced to five years of federal probation, including 60 days on home detention, and ordered to pay $90,000 in restitution for receipt of stolen money.
According to court documents and statements made in court, Oluwabamishe Awolesi, also known as Oluwabamise Johnson, admitted to his role in a romance fraud scheme that defrauded more than 200 victims, many of them elderly, of at least $2.5 million. One victim of the scheme transferred a total of $90,000 into Awolesi’s checking account in September 2018. Awolesi kept $12,000 of the total and forwarded the rest to others involved in the scheme.
Awolesi, a citizen of Nigeria and the United States, lived in Huntington during his involvement in the scheme. Three indictments targeting the scheme allege that from 2016 to 2020, multiple defendants participated in a series of romance and other online scams designed to coerce vulnerable victims into sending money to various bank accounts controlled by them.
The indictments describe romance scams as online schemes that target individuals looking for romantic partners, friendship and other close personal and business relationships on dating websites and other social media platforms.
Members of the fraud and money laundering conspiracy created profiles using fictitious names, locations and images that allowed them to cultivate relationships with the victims. To carry out the schemes alleged in the indictments, victims were often led to believe that they were in relationships with U.S. residents working abroad. However, the investigation revealed that the individuals the victims viewed as their romantic partners were false personas created by members of the fraud and money laundering conspiracies.
