Online dating scammer sentenced in Cape Town

Cape Town – A Nigerian man, who ended up in
Cape Town by pretending he was a student,
admitted this week that he used an online
dating site to scam women out of more than
R1.2m.
Ndubusi Ifediora, 31, entered into a plea and
sentence agreement in Bellville Specialised
Commercial Crime Court this week for charges
that were usually quite tricky to investigate.
He was sentenced to 12 years in jail, wholly
suspended for five years, and had to pay back
what he took from the victims.
The two women in their 50s, both from Texas in
the USA, sent him expensive gadgets and
money.
Ifediora did not have a job, but entered the
country with a degree in sociology.
The ruling comes in the middle of Cyber Crime
Awareness month.
Besides sifting through electronic evidence for
16 counts of fraud, investigators had to
contend with Ifediora flushing a sim card down
the toilet when he was arrested in June. He
later admitted the sim card held incriminating
evidence against him.
A Hawks team seized three phones and three
laptops from his apartment in Rochester Road,
Table View.
Preyed on lonely women
He admitted in his plea that he used online
dating site Match.Com to prey on vulnerable,
trusting and lonely women.
This was done with other unknown syndicate
members using false identities and random
photos of generally attractive people.
The first woman, Patti Kilpatrick, befriended a
man she thought was "Michael Brich" last year.
He told her he was raised in Germany and a
widower, with one son attending medical
school.
She sent him an Apple computer, an iPhone
and an Apple Watch after he phoned her to say
his gadgets had been stolen.
Another woman, Rita Love, befriended a man
she knew as "Scott Egil" in March this year. He
apparently had problems with equipment and
his credit card was stolen. He asked her for
money and she transferred it.
Investigators calculated that the women paid
him around R1.24m.
Ifediora also faced charges of conspiracy to
commit fraud and contravening the Immigration
Act.
He confessed that he entered the country with
a study visa based on false representations to
home affairs. He had lied about being
registered at a technical college.
He was subsequently deported to Nigeria.
'If it looks too good to be true, it usually is'
The court took into account that he was
remorseful, had a one-year-old child, and
suffered from sickle-cell anaemia. He had been
taking chronic medication for the incurable
disease for years.
Western Cape Hawks spokesperson Captain
Lloyd Ramovha welcomed the sentence.
He said the court ordered Ifediora to pay over
R500 000 into the criminal asset recovery
account, to ensure the victims were
reimbursed.
"The sentence is a culmination of sterling
detective work put in by the team from the
commercial unit of the Hawks. It is an open
secret that cases of this nature are not easy to
solve. We say well done to the team," he said.
The public were warned not to respond to
emails, social media invitations, and online
messages from unknown people.
"If it is real, if it looks too good to be true, it
usually is."