Simple Trick Between January 2016 and Sept of 2019,
Rubbin Sarpong and his squad worked together to scam women in New Jersey and the surrounding area
on online dating apps. His accomplices lived in Ghana, while he lived in the US. What he
and team would do is set up fake dating profiles all over the place on various dating websites,
such as Plenty of Fish, Okcupid, Tinder.. Sarpong would routinely hit up women on
online dating sites looking for romance. Whatever platform you could think of,
he was on there messaging women. He would message and quickly sweet talk women looking
for love. But then he’d quickly turn the conversation into a promise of getting rich.
It goes without saying that they would ALWAYS use a fake person identity.
Sometimes they’d go through the trouble of making fake IDs as well. They also had to
set up numerous email addresses, numerous phone numbers, and numerous bank accounts.
And most of the time, they posed as US military personnel stationed overseas.
But why the military? Military
Simply put it’s because of the fact that being in the military just makes things MUCH easier for
scammers in general. It’s actually quite smart for the scammers. The fact that military personnel are
stationed outside the US makes it easy for scammers to make up excuses why they don’t
have something a normal person would have when someone asks them questions. They can just blame
everything on the fact that they’re overseas in the Military! Plus there’s the whole secrecy thing
they can play up with the government at play. Hundreds of times a day, women all over the world
are being conned by scammers posing as US service members. This is according to Chris Grey from the
U.S. Army Criminal Investigation Command. They literally get hundreds of calls a day about
dating scams! Most of the victims are women in the US. They mostly range from their late 30s to late
70s. You’d think that it would be someone who’s dumb and uneducated. Nope! Grey says
that education doesn’t matter. Plenty of highly educated people get scammed as well!
.Mil Check According to Grey,
there’s one easy step to avoid getting scammed by a military impostor. Just ask to be sent an
email from his or her military account ending in dot Mill. Grey says the scammers will do
everything they can to get around this email check. They’ll just quickly make up another lie,
such as saying they’re on a top secret mission. Hotspots for online romance scams include Nigeria
and other countries in West Africa. But today there’s only a small number of personnel in the
West African region. For example, fewer than 50 military and civilian employees and contractors
are in Nigeria! Golden Play
After Sarpong establishes some virtual sparks with the women, this is when the real work starts. He
starts asking them for help in the form of money! For Sarpong, gold was always involved. Sarpong
would make up that money was needed for the purpose of paying to get gold bars into the US.
The stories that Sarpong and his team use aren’t the same every time. They tailor
it for each woman. Most of the time Sarpong would claim to be a soldier stationed in Syria.
He’d say he either received, found, or was awarded gold bars. He’s now rich, but he had a problem.
He didn’t have enough cash on hand to ship the gold bars himself. There were taxes to be paid,
shipping fees, and other fake invoices that needed to be paid in order to get the gold to the US!
He’d tell the women that their money would be returned once the gold bars were back
to the states, and of course, they’d get a lot more money back for their efforts!
Let’s get into some details with the scam. One unidentified and unfortunate lady we’ll
call Scammed Victim number 1 went back and forth with Sarpong. He told her that he was
stationed in Syria and his unit had recovered MILLIONS of dollars worth of gold bars.
He told this lady that he was given one of the boxes of gold, and that box was worth
$12 million dollars! Why do people fall for this? Has anyone heard of the military ever giving away
gold bars to soldiers?! Anyways, Sarpong started asking her if she could help him get the bars
back to the US once he knew she was hooked. And this is where Sarpong usually has the ladies
talk to one of his team members, just so they could build some trust in the ladies’ minds.
Diplomat Lyss In this specific instance,
someone on his squad posed as a diplomat named Alwin Rolf Lyss. He was supposed to help her
help Sarpong with the transfer of the gold back to the US. This fake diplomat would have
the perfect answer for every one of her questions. How come Lyss didn’t have his own US bank account?
Because he wasn’t a US citizen! So he had the victim wire her money to his secretary’s bank
account. He told her this was the account he used whenever he arranged gold deliveries for people!
Of course, that bank account actually belonged to Sarpong. Even after the victim wired the
money over, they would keep talking to her. Why would they do this? If they found someone who
would send money one time, why wouldn’t they send money a second time? Or a third time? Or maybe a
fourth time! The money just keeps coming until the women realize they’re getting scammed! Basically,
they’re going for max value per scam here! A few days later, Fake Diplomat Lyss told
Victim number 1 the good news. He would be flying from Syria to New York, and then to Maryland with
the gold. He emailed a copy of a fake airway bill that showed the two trunks with the quote "family
treasure" that were being shipped to her. The fake airway bill had her address on it. They
really tried to make it seem like she was getting the gold! He was listed as the delivery agent. But
there was one problem. There would be extra costs! Lyss also attached a copy of a fake United Nations
Identity Card that showed that he was an Israeli citizen and an official delivery agent for the UN.
Also he told her, that way, she would recognize him when she picked him up at the airport!
From approximately May 22, 2018 to June 12, 2018, Sarpong and his scam team successfully
scammed almost 94 thousand dollars from this particular lady running this usual military play!
Alternatives But Sarpong didn’t always go after women,
and he didn’t always use the military. He went after at least 1 man! Sarpong pretended to be a
lady who was living in Florida in one instance. Sarpong played a lady who was waiting on a
large inheritance that was mostly in gold from her dad’s estate in Ghana. Because who’s dad
wouldn’t have their assets mostly in gold?! We’ll call this guy Scammer Victim #2,
or number 2 for short. Sarpong told Number 2 an attorney named Mumuni Muhammad was helping her get
her inheritance to the US. But she needed funds in order to cover the court costs,
airway bills, document fees, export fees, and taxes! She’s now rich,
but she just didn’t have cash on hand. Their scam is just a spin off the Nigerian Prince scam right?
Muhammad had instructed number 2 to wire the money to Sarpong, who Muhammad would refer to
as one of his sons in New Jersy. And when number 2 asked why his son had a different last name,
he would just make up a different lie! You would think these scammers would be extremely careful,
but they’re really not. They make up a lot of sophisticated sounding lies,
but they still make mistakes on the fly. But what helps them also is just the little glimmer
of hope for love and money from the victim! Muhammad ended up making up the excuse that
Sarpong was someone who used to work for him and that he misspoke. This guy still sent the
money anyway. All for the hope of even more money coming back along with getting to help someone who
he thinks is a real woman! #2 eventually wired a little over THREE HUNDRED thousand dollars to
Sarpong and his team! Split
Of the roughly $2.1 million dollars that they were able to scam out of people, about 40 percent went
to Sarpong and the remaining money went to the rest of the team. So what did Sarpong do with HIS
portion? If you check out Sarpong’s instagram, he was definitely desperate for attention.
You can just tell that he wanted the world to know that he was living it up.
He craved that validation of a successful business man. The funny thing is that no
one really paid attention. None of his posts have that many likes. Ultimately he did these scams and
made some money. Instead of saving the money, and trying NOT to get caught, here he was blowing the
money on random frivolous things and posting it online! It’s like he ALMOST wanted to get caught!
Investigators eventually caught on to Sarpong and his team. They said that he was the ringleader of
the international operation that scammed over 30 women. He was charged in federal court with
just a single count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud. And he was the only one actually charged,
because everyone else was international. Here’s the craziest thing. He actually asked
a judge to assign him to a public defender. Why? Because he claimed
he didn't have enough money to pay for a lawyer! Click to watch one of these next videos!
Let us know in the comment section if you would rather try to meet someone online
or meet someone in real life when it comes to dating!