JAILED FOR 6 YEARS
| Jailed: Oluwamayola Ajayi |
An acclaimed gospel singer who used a dating site to steal more than £120,000 from lonely women by posing as a pilot, oil executive and grieving widower has been jailed for six-and-a-half years.
Nigerian conman, Oluwamayola Ajayi, 31, preyed on four single women on popular dating website Match.com using a series of aliases and outlandish stories to fleece them of their cash.
He even sent email threats, purportedly from a captor, claiming he had been kidnapped and would be killed if a ransom was not paid.
Ajayi, who was nominated for best international act at the 2011 Gospel Music Awards under his stage name MaioJoe, was jailed for conspiracy to defraud at Snaresbrook Crown Court with Judge Sarah Paneth saying that it was clear he intended to defraud his victims 'for much more money' than he did.
He blew all the money on a luxury lifestyle, including a holiday to South Africa.
Judge Paneth added:
'This was not money these women had to spare, it was money they needed back urgently’. 'Having spent all of their money you pursued them for more by saying you would be killed if they did not pay’.
His victims, who all live in America and Canada, were ‘completely taken in’ by his elaborate lies. They were left humiliated and some were financially ruined by the scam, which ran between November 2009 and August 2010.
One victim handed over more than $125,000 (now £78,662) from her late husband’s life savings and dead mother’s estate, which she had earmarked for retirement.
Ajayi - a Conman of identities including posing
as a pilot, oil executive and grieving widower to
fleece four women out of their cash
|
Prosecutor Markus Rickard said:
‘He told a story to her about some gold bars he had found and that he wanted to get them out of Iraq so they could secure their financial future’. ‘This inevitably led to the woman having supply money via an intermediary in London, to enable the gold bars to be taken from Iraq’.
‘She was completely taken in by him and intended to spend the rest of her life with him’. ‘At one point, she arranged to meet him at an airport and waited for five hours for him, but he did not turn up.
‘This has left her flat broke and deeply embarrassed’. (It takes a ‘longer-throat’ person to fall a victim of any scammer )
Ajayi pocketed around $30,000 (£18,873) from another internet lover, leaving her in financial dire straits.
The singer also posed as a project manager in the oil and gas industry to fleece $7,000 (£4,404) from his final victim, telling her he needed the cash for expenses including a ‘Crude Oil Lifting Licence’.
He told all but one of the women that he was a white widower with children from Britain called Mark West, who was currently living in the US.
Mr Rickard added: ‘The defendant systematically and repeatedly misrepresented himself to lonely females using the internet and cheated them out of £120,000 from November 2009 until August 2010’.
Ajayi was arrested last August at the home he shares with his wife in Chadwell Heath, Essex.
During interview in a prepared statement, he insisted one of his victims was the girlfriend of a friend who owed him money. He claimed he used an account in the name of Rodrigues-Guedes as he did not have one in his own name.
The computer equipment on which police found scores of emails with money transfers, credit card details, bank statements, personal information and photographs belonged to the ‘real’ Rodrigues-Guedes, Ajayiclaimed.
But Rodrigues-Guedes has never been found, prompting police to believe he is simply an identity dreamed up by Ajayi to carry out his con.
Ajayi denied conspiracy to defraud, fraud, concealing criminal property, using criminal property and two counts of possessing articles for use in frauds. He was unanimously convicted by a jury on all counts after a trial and after admitting a single count of possessing a false identity document with intent.
A spokesman for match.com today [Nov. 19] urged users to follow its safety guidelines when online dating.
- Daily Mail
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