A 63-year-old woman from Texas was swindled out of $100,000 after believing she was dating singer Bruno Mars.
39-year-old Chinwendu Azuonwu, a permanent resident of Houston and a Nigerian national, was accused of impersonating the pop star on Instagram and scamming the woman.
According to KPRC-TV, he was charged with third-degree felony money laundering, and his accomplice was identified as 29-year-old Basil Amadi.
The victim from North Richland Hills told police that she started using Instagram in 2018 as she wanted to search for a partner.
She then connected with a person claiming to be Bruno Mars and they quickly ‘fell in love.’
The 63-year-old woman said that Mars told her that he was planning to quit his tour so he could be with her.
Mars then asked her if she could send him a $10,000 check to help cover his expenses for his tours, police said.
The victim agreed and went to Wells Fargo Bank to withdraw a cashier’s check for ‘Basil Chidiasi Amadi,’ a person ‘Mars’ described as a friend of the band.
After two days, the fake singer asked her for another $90,000 but did not explain his reason. The 63-year-old returned to the local bank and withdrew a check made out to ‘Chi Autos.’
Both checks were deposited into JPMorgan Chase accounts.
Investigators subpoenaed bank records and managed to trace the two accounts to Amadi and Azuonwu.
If convicted, each of them faces 2 to 10 years in jail.
One person commented: “This is sad. This is obviously a naive and probably lonely woman and it and it is really cruel to take advantage of her.”
Another wrote: “It sounds like a stupid thing to do, but there are a lot of lonely people out there. If someone did this to my mom or grandma, I’d want them punished to the max.”
A third added: “There are a lot of mentally ill and gullible people out there that fall for relationship scams. I know of someone personally who gets himself into this mess over and over again. Very sad and frustrating.”
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