Online Charmer Jailed For Fleecing Seventeen Women

A “sophisticated and charismatic” online fraudster – who posed as a wealthy white American businessman – conned a fortune out of a string of women who fell for his fake charms.

Seventeen victims have been identified in the USA, Canada and Trinidad & Tobago and one woman sent him £177,000 and another was bankrupted.

Hery Agunu, 25, (pic.top) of Odessa Road, Forest Gate, East London abused Facebook, dating websites and other social media to build a fake online profile.

Victims sent money to tide him over after being convinced he had won a multi-million pound Olympic contract and the funds were laundered via the bank account of Evelina Sisin, 39, (pic.bottom) of Chiltern House, Beaconsfield Road, Edmonton.

Agunu pleaded guilty to committing fraud by false representation and received six years and four months imprisonment and Sisin received eighteen months for money laundering at Isleworth Crown Court.

The scam was exposed after a bank in the US stopped a payment, which they believed to be fraudulent and alerted the authorities.

The US authorities handed the case over to Operation Podium – which targetted Olympic Games-associated crime - and Agunu was tracked down.

The defendant's 'M.O' was to portray himself as a widowed businessman in search of love and companionship and he built a number of aliases for himself, using details of real people.

He spent anything from two weeks to months to groom his victims into forming a relationship with him and even falling in love.

The next step in Agunu's scam would be to persuade the women that he was struggling financially and needed to borrow money until he got paid.

In one scam he told the victim that he had won a multi-million pound contract to deliver 'platform and transport services' for the Metropolitan Police Service during the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games.

He went to lengths researching and writing a fake lucrative contract showing himself as the winner of the work.

The victims are aged from their mid 50s to late 70s.

Detective Superintendent Nick Downing, from Operation Podium, said: "Agunu was a sophisticated and charismatic operator who deliberately wormed his way into way into women's affections, promising love and marriage, simply to rip them off.

"He has made thousands of pounds, and left a number of women suffering more than just financial lost.

"My advice to anyone is simple, no matter what the circumstances, never give money to anyone you meet online and cannot prove for yourself they are who they say.

"Even if they use the name of a well-known organisation, such as ours, or produce professional looking documents in an attempt to add credence to their claims. Such things are all too easy to fake and it is almost certainly not genuine.”