DALLAS — A romance scammer with ties to a Nigerian organized crime syndicate was sentenced this week to more than three years in federal prison, U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Texas Leigha Simonton said.
Emanuel Stanley Orji, a 36-year-old green card holder born in Nigeria, was charged alongside 10 co-conspirators in a large-scale operation led by the FBI in in September 2021. He pleaded guilty in September 2022 to conspiracy to commit wire fraud and was sentenced Monday to 37 months in federal prison by Chief U.S. District Judge David Godbey, who also ordered him to pay $418,030 in restitution to his victims.
His brother, 38-year-old naturalized citizen Frederick Orji, pleaded guilty to the same crimes and received the same sentence in December 2022.
According to court documents, the Orjis and their co-defendants preyed on elderly victims, many of whom were widowed or divorced. They assumed fake names and trolled dating sites like Match.com and Bumbledate.com, searching for targets.
Once they had ingratiated themselves with their victims, they concocted stories about why they needed money — including taxes to release an inheritance, essential overseas travel, crippling debt, etc. — and then siphoned money from victim’s accounts, tens of thousands of dollars at a time.
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