Ghanaian ‘US soldier in Iraq’ defrauds woman

A man claiming to be Ghanaian and posing as a US soldier in Iraq has defrauded an American woman of $10,000 by false pretences, the Gateway News has reported.

The publication quoting an April 20, 2009 police report, said the woman a resident of Streetsboro in Ohio gave the money to the scammer believing she was helping a US soldier in Iraq.

According to the report the woman, who was not named, began an online relationship with the man in January. The man claimed he is in the army stationed in Iraq.

The woman told police that in the next four months, after they met, she gave the man $10,000.

The woman, according to the report told police that the man told her that he had been discharged from the army and was trying to leave Iraq with a “large sum” of money.

The man, she said, kept reporting “problems along the way” as he tried to return to America and needed more money from her.

According to the police report, the man requested that the money was to be sent to his “associate” in Ghana.

After she gave him the $10,000 he kept asking her for more money, but the woman said she could not afford to send him any more money.

Soon after that, the man started calling her saying “his life was in danger” and he needed more money, according to the police report. At this point, co-workers advised her to go to the police.

Meanwhile, a U.S. Army agent, who helped police with the investigation told police that he had found that a soldier with the same picture given to the woman had been in Iraq.

The report indicated that Police contacted the soldier, who said the photos were from a social networking website, but he had never visited the website the woman claimed to have met the man.

However, the soldier said he had been contacted by a different woman asking him “personal questions”, but thought it was a scam and did not reply to her. The solider said in the report that the woman may have been lured into a similar fraud using his likeness.

The incident was filed with the Internet Crime Complaint Center for further investigation, the report stated.

Internet scams known in Ghana as ‘sakawa’ have reached what authorities call “alarming proportions”. About 82 cyber crimes are said to occur in Ghana every month, and Ghana and Nigeria have been blacklisted by some retail shops in the US and Canada.