Love and fraud (Part 1)

You know very well that there are a lot of fraudsters lurking in the internet just waiting for the right opportunity to scam people. And by the word “opportunity” I refer to a combination of timing and the person to defraud on. You may have received an email from a supposed heiress who stands to inherit half a million dollars but needs some financial assistance because she has no means to hire a lawyer to go to court, or from a Nigerian prince who wants you to invest in his country for oil drilling or diamond mining. These are just examples of scams circulating online that promise you a share of the windfall or the profit should you decide to give your hard-earned savings. You may ask, who would fall for these kinds of scams when it is too obvious that these are just bogus claims? Well, I have seen and known people who really got lured into these traps, never to see their money again.

What if this kind of modern-day thievery plays into people's feelings of love and promise of forever? Let's take the case of Billy.

Billy is single, lives alone, comfortably well-to-do, and in his mid-fifties. He have been trying to find someone to marry but had no luck dating women in America so he tried to search for possible partners online. On a certain website, he met Aswan, a young, charismatic, and pretty woman from Nigeria. Since the day they met online almost three years ago, Billy and Aswan have been talking by phone or chatting online. During one of their online chats, he proposed to marry Aswan and promised to take her out of her difficult life in Nigeria.

As they became engaged albeit through online dating only, Billy cared for her so much. He did not mind that Aswan started to ask money from him for house rent, food, clothing, and for other daily expenses. He even gladly obliged by sending her money on a monthly basis. He even helped her start a business by sending her American-made products that she could sell in her country. He even bought her a car and a parcel of land, both under her name. (To be continued)

This column is not a substitute for professional legal advice obtained from a US-licensed immigration attorney. The information contained herein does not constitute a warranty or guarantee or legal advice regarding a reader’s specific immigration case. No attorney-client relationship is and shall be established with any reader.

For any questions, comments and observations, please contact Atty. Marco Tomakin at [email protected]