A United States federal court has sentenced a Lagos-based internet fraudster, Daniel Chima Inweregbu, to prison for his involvement in wire fraud and a romance-scam scheme targeting American women.
In a statement issued on Friday, the U.S. Department of Justice, DOJ, announced that Inweregbu, 40, received 33 months in federal prison from U.S. District Judge Nanette Jolivette Brown.
His sentence also includes three years of supervised release, a $100 special assessment, and $166,400 in restitution to his victims.
Inweregbu was extradited from the United Kingdom to the United States to face prosecution and later pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit mail fraud, wire fraud, use of an assumed identity in a mail-fraud operation, and conspiracy to commit money laundering.
According to the DOJ, Inweregbu targeted four American women, deceiving them with fabricated romantic relationships and inducing them to send large sums of money.
Investigators said the fraud caused over $405,000 in actual and intended losses.
Court documents show that between July 2017 and December 2018, Inweregbu and his accomplices ran a coordinated romance-fraud network, preying on vulnerable women—identified as Victims 1 through 4—through false promises, emotional manipulation and carefully crafted online personas.
Operating under the alias “Larry Pham,” a fictional Canadian-born Vietnamese man, the conspirators used social media, email and messaging platforms to initiate contact, gain trust, and exploit the victims’ desire for companionship.
Once emotional attachment was established, the scammers persuaded the women to send money to U.S.-based bank accounts under various fraudulent pretexts.
The funds were then laundered through intermediaries in an attempt to obscure their origin and conceal the criminal network behind the scheme.