Maurice Asola Fadola charmed vulnerable lonely women during
his 'Rom Con' scam, sending flowers on their birthdays and bombarding them with
flattering messages and poetry.
But he would soon claim to be in some sort of financial
difficulty and ask the often widowed pensioners to send cash his way - which he
used to pay for a lavish gold-plated mansion in his home country.
The conman, believed to be in his 40s, has now been unmasked
as one of the world's most prolific online dating fraudsters as his callous
crimes left some victims penniless and even HOMELESS.
Mirror reports that at least 19 British victims were spun an
elaborate web of lies as Fadola used pictures of US Army servicemen plundered
from the web to claim he was serving in Iraq and needed cash for emergency
medical treatment, customs charges or even to buy his way out of the army.
In all, he is believed to have conned 19 British victims out
of around £800,000.
After almost three years of heartache and accusations,
Fadola has now been sentenced in his native country to five years in prison and
ordered to repay his victims in full.
One victim, 71-year-old grandmother Katherine Clark from
Southsea, Hampshire, travelled to Ghana to give evidence against Fadola.
She had lost her husband 30 years previously and was charmed
by the conman, who this time claimed to be a British builder named Bruce living
in London.
Speaking to Sky News in 2011, she said: "He made feel
great, he made me feel wanted and that he was genuine. It was a nice
feeling."
Fadola soon told Ms Clark he was moving to Ghana and
encouraged her to send money to him to invest in a mining company.
She even travelled to the West African country at one point
to meet 'Bruce' and encountered Fadola - who was pretending to be Bruce's
driver.
He took her to Fadola's luxury marble-clad mansion, showed
her a case of gold to prove the investment was genuine and then said Bruce was
in prison and needed her money for bail.
On another occasion, 57-year-old widow Dena White, of East
Yorkshire, lost her home after she re-mortgaged her property and used £50,000
of her savings to help 'Steve Moon' in a legal dispute over the impounding of
his war medals.
Fadola - posing as Moon - said he couldn't access his own
cash because he was serving in Iraq. The pair chatted through a dating website
for hours each day.
Speaking to the Daily Mail after he was unmasked, she said:
"Of course I was wary but everything he told me seemed to check out.
"He’d send me poetry. It sounds silly now but we were
in love."
Fadola was snared when he tried to obtain a British visa
which disclosed his true identity to the National Crime Agency, who were
investigating a case where a disabled woman had been persuaded to sell her
house and send funds to Ghana.
He is believed to have targeted women across Britain,
France, Sweden, Italy and the US and was found guilty of more than 20 offences
stemming from his 2012 trial.
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