An Aubrey woman has been rocked with a guilty verdict for her role in swindling the elderly through romance scams. Ijeoma Okoro, 33, faced the hammer of judgment in a federal court Thursday, where a jury nailed her with convictions for one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and one count for conspiracy to commit money laundering after a weeklong trial and 10 hours of jury ruminations, as per the Department of Justice.
U.S. Attorney Leigha Simonton couldn't hide her pride over the trial's outcome. "I am so proud of the federal agents and our office’s prosecutors in this case, who worked diligently to hold the defendants accountable for conspiring to defraud these innocent victims of money and then conspiring to launder that money,” she boasted in a statement. These sham romances have caused real-world devastation, mainly targeting the heartstrings and bank accounts of unsuspecting seniors, according to the Department of Justice.
A closer look at the trial's depositions reveals Okoro, along with her underhanded band, sliced through Match.com and Zoosk for their prey. These con artists donned fake personas to weave tales of financial woe, often pulled at the strings of their victims, who were typically divorced or widowed, with fabricated urgencies like inaccessible bank accounts and fictitious overseas emergencies.
"Ms. Okoro, and her coconspirators stole money from retirement accounts, pensions, and other sources as part of several romance scams,” unveiled Christopher J. Altemus Jr., the IRS Criminal Investigation's Dallas Field Office top dog. The schemes these swindlers hatched had one endgame: to build trust, then raid the nest eggs of those they conned. Okoro now stares down the barrel of up to 20 years in the slammer for the wire fraud count and up to 10 years for the money laundering count, not to forget a likely order to cough up the dough back to the shattered victims, per the Department of Justice.
It was a joint crackdown that brought Okoro to book, with the IRS-Criminal Investigation taking the lead in partnership with the FBI's Frisco Field Office, Homeland Security Investigations, and the Department of Labor Office of Inspector General. The legal rigmarole was helmed by Assistant U.S. Attorneys Mary Walters, Jenna Rudoff, and Elyse Lyons. Okoro's sentencing date is still on the docket.
