Franklin Ikechukwu Nwadialo, chairman of Ogbaru Local Government Area of Anambra State, has been sentenced to five years in prison in the United States for his scheme to steal some $3.5 million from eight different victims via an online romance scam.
The 42-year-old Nigerian national, Nwadialo was arrested at an airport in Texas upon his arrival in the U.S. in 2024. He was indicted in December 2023 for 14 counts of wire fraud connected to his romance fraud scheme.
At the sentencing hearing U.S. District Judge Tiffany M. Cartwright called the crime “devastating,” noting that it is “not an exaggeration to say it ruined lives—not only financial lives” but also from the nonmonetary harms the victims endured, such as “shame, depression, and isolation from their own family.”
“This defendant preyed on those already suffering from the loss of loved ones or other heartbreak. For some 15 years he upended the lives of people he never met,” said First Assistant U.S. Attorney Neil Floyd. “He spun tale after tale to gain the victims’ trust and their money – even claiming to run a non-profit providing services for autistic children. No scheme was too low for these conspirators.”
“For years, Mr. Nwadialo preyed on vulnerable victims looking for relationships online, gained their trust, and told them lies to steal their life savings totaling millions of dollars,” said W. Mike Harrington, Special Agent in Charge of the FBI Seattle field office. “Fortunately, although he operated his romance scams from overseas, Mr. Nwadialo ultimately traveled to the United States where he could be arrested and held accountable for his crimes here in the Western District of Washington.”
From records filed in the case, Nwadialo defrauded victims of more than $3.5 million. He used various versions of the name ‘Giovanni” when he met his victims online on dating websites such as Match, Zoosk, and Christian Café. He used false images and information for his profile, typically telling victims that he was in the military and deployed overseas so he could not meet them in person.
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