A 40-year-old Nigerian national was arrested upon his arrival at a Texas airport, ensnared by an indictment for wire fraud connected to an alleged romance scheme that siphoned over $3.3 million from victims. Identified as Franklin Ikechukwu Nwadialo, the man had been indicted in December 2023 for 14 counts of wire fraud, according to documentation in the Western District of Washington. The U.S. Attorney’s Office reports Nwadialo was en route from Nigeria when he was apprehended.
Nwadialo is set to quickly be transported to Washington for arraignment. "All too often the defendants in these romance scams are overseas and unreachable by U.S. law enforcement," U.S. Attorney Tessa M. Gorman stated. She continued to praise the investigators, "I congratulate investigators who are alert to any opportunity to arrest such defendants and hold them accountable," according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office.
The alleged fraud involved Nwadialo using a variety of aliases, predominantly variations of 'Giovanni,' to meet and deceive victims on dating websites such as Match, Zoosk, and Christian Café. He is accused of utilizing false images and typically claimed to be an overseas-deployed military member, a pretext that provided a convenient excuse for not meeting his supposed love interests in person. As per the indictment, Nwadialo concocted various false narratives which always concluded with requests for money.
In one of the detailed instances, Nwadialo deceived a victim into believing he had to pay a $150,000 fine imposed by the military, which wound up costing that victim upwards of $2.4 million. Similarly, another victim was entangled under the pretense of transferring money due to the defendant's father’s death, leading to a loss of $330,000. A third victim was tricked into "reinvesting" a sum of $270,000 into a cryptocurrency account controlled by Nwadialo. Lastly, one other victim was defrauded of at least $310,000 by Nwadialo’s tales of needing money for his father's funeral or his son’s tuition, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office announcement.
Each of the 14 counts of wire fraud pertains to the communications between Nwadialo and the victims, alongside the wired funds to the defendant and his co-schemers. If convicted, wire fraud carries a sentence of up to twenty years in prison. However, under U.S. law, an indictment is not a finding of guilt. A defendant is considered innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt in a court of law. The investigation into the case was led by the FBI, with Assistant United States Attorney Sok Jiang prosecuting.
