Vida Patty Agboletey
Plans are underway for the Economic and Organised Crime Office (EOCO) to remit an amount of $20,000 to an American, who was defrauded by a convict Vida Patty Agboletey, aka Elizabeth Caldwell, through cyber fraud.
The money was deposited in the offshore Fidelity Bank Account of the convict which was frozen by EOCO during investigations.
Vida Patty Agboletey, under the fraudulent name of Elizabeth Caldwell, was on Tuesday sentenced to 12 months’ imprisonment on the offence of conspiracy to defraud and 18 months for money laundering.
She was also ordered by the court to pay a fine of 400 penalty units and 1,000 penalty units in respect of the offences or in default serve 48 months in jail in hard labour.
She is currently serving her jail term at the Nsawam Medium Security Prison.
Facts
Chigozie Awom, aka Obinnah, a Nigerian, who was using the forged name Davis Wingate in 2012, met the complainant on an online dating site.
The two later established a relationship and Chigozie began to demand items and money.
Chigozie Awom later lied to the woman that he had been transferred to Ghana to construct a $800,000.00 bridge and would return after the completion of the project.
Vida Patty Agboletey and her accomplice Chigozie Awom, aka Davis Wingate, now at large, made false presentation to the victim, an American engineer based in Phoenix, Arizona through an online dating scam.
According to the facts, Chigozie Awom asked the complainant to send him money to take care of his son, among others.
He reportedly promised to pay back the money after the completion of the purported project in Ghana.
Throughout the fraudulent act, Vida Patty Agboletey used her bank account, which she fraudulently opened with a fake National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) identification card under the name Elizabeth Caldwell.
According to the prosecution, investigations revealed that between March 2012 and October 2013, the US citizen sent money and Dell laptop, four cell phones, eight Apple iPads and a hand-held video game system to both the convict and her accomplice.
The prosecution noted that the most significant transaction occurred on July 18, 2013 when the complainant wired US$20,000.00 from a US bank account to the Fidelity Bank account of the convict.
The convict, during the four-year trial denied any wrongdoing, claiming that the money was sent to her by the stepmother and she took steps to get EOCO to defreeze the bank account but to no avail.
She also claimed that she had no idea that the monies were proceeds of crime, a statement, which was inconsistent with her earlier statement on the source of the monies.
The court, presided over by Justice Afia Serwah Asare-Botwe, at the end of the trial, found her guilty of two charges – conspiracy to defraud by false pretenses and money laundering.
She was convicted and sentenced accordingly.
(lindatenyah@gmail.com)
By Linda Tenyah-Ayettey