Godwin
Nwaofor, 36, a conman, of Camberell Green, south London, was found guilty of
conspiracy to defraud, converting criminal property, and acquisition of
criminal property.
He will serve half his sentence in
prison and the remaining
part on licence and will also now face confiscation proceeds.
Nwaofor, funded
a playboy lifestyle by cheating pensioners out of their life savings by sending
s bogus letters saying they had won the Australian Lottery.
He drove a
Maserati and fired bubbly corks across exclusive private members clubs as he
lived a life of fantastic luxury on his victim’s life savings.
The scam
started with a bogus letter to a vulnerable pensioner telling them they had won
the Australian Lottery.
The letters
were sent by a ‘lottery agent’ targeting mainly American pensioners informing
them they had won a life-changing prize and requesting a modest sum to release
the funds.
Believing
they had won, victims were hooked into paying fees to release their ‘winnings’
through an agent who would demand ‘activation fees’ to release their cash.
In some
cases, dupes set up businesses in an attempt to receive their winnings and
became unwitting money mules laundering cash from other victims.
Nwaofor, a
father of two, regularly switched addresses to avoid being caught.
One victim,
a 76-year-old woman, who believed she had won $1.85m, tried to track down
Nwaofor after the FBI told her she had fallen victim to a scam.
She flew to
the UK and went to the address she had for Nwaofor, but found that he had
already moved on to another address.
Judge
Richard Hone QC said the evidence in the case, at Central Criminal Court,
against Nwaofor was ‘overwhelming’ and showed him to be a proven liar.
‘You have a
tendency to be dishonest in your dealings with landlords, agencies, the police,
HMRC, and car hire firms’, he said.
‘You also
moved addresses regularly to ensure your whereabouts remained a mystery.’
Police
identified 406 victims from two notebooks found at Onyeachonam’s Canary Wharf
penthouse when he was arrested.
They seized
Louis Vuitton shoes, Gucci handbags, a collection of expensive watches and
dozens of designer shoes, as well as 5,000 pictures of Onyeachonam flaunting
his wealth at exclusive upmarket venues including the Guvnor Bar in Docklands,
east London.
There was
also evidence of extensive communication with Lagos resident Ese Orogun,
nicknamed the ‘chairman’, who is thought to be the global mastermind of the
fraud.
He lives in
a private gated community, is a ‘celebrity’ in the Nigerian capital and drives
multiple supercars, including a Maserati and a Porsche.
Detectives
fear the scale of the fraud could even mushroom to £30million if all the
details discovered in notebooks and emails can be traced to victims.
Nwaofor
moved to the UK in January 2006 from Nigeria and soon married a German citizen.
He has two
children with her, aged six and six-months-old.
He broke
down in tears as he was jailed for seven years this morning, but the judge said
he did not believe the remorse was genuine.
‘Just as a
crocodile sheds its tears while devouring its prey, so the copious weeping in
court is not hypocritical remorse but tears of frustration that in spite of
your careful concealment, you have been well and truly rumbled’, the judge told
him.
‘This
Australian lottery scam has brought penury and debt to your victims who were
ruthlessly milked of their hard earned savings.’
The judge
said although ten victims were traced by prosecutors as having fallen for
Nwaofor’s scam, but that was probably the ‘tip of the iceberg’.
‘Vast sums
of cash you used to fund a luxury lifestyle, with top of the range hire cars,
large watches, gold jewellery, expensive nightclubs’, said the judge.
‘It shows
you made the best part of £1m yourself.’
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