BUTLER COUNTY — A Butler County woman is facing multiple federal charges after FBI agents said she and other co-conspirators used fake dating profiles on several websites to defraud victims out of hundreds of thousands of dollars, according to U.S. District Court records.
De-Love Kofi Amuzu, 23, of Fairfield, was arrested in the Bronx on Jan. 13 following her indictment by a federal grand jury on 10 federal charges. The charges included mail fraud, wire fraud, money laundering conspiracy, money laundering and conspiracy to commit mail fraud.
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Amuzu was part of a conspiracy that “created profiles on dating websites using false information and pictures of other individuals” and the used the fake profiles “to initiate contact with victims via the internet, pretending to be the person pictured in the false profile,” the indictment read.
The crimes Amuzu, who also is a citizen of Ghana in Africa, were said to have happened from around August 2018 to January this year, the indictment said.
According to a complaint filed in the U.S. District Court of Southern Ohio by the FBI, the conspiracy, which included Amuzu, ended up defrauding one victim of $100,000 using the aliases of “Marvin Anderson” and “Dion Wilson.”
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The FBI said another victim met someone on the dating website Plenty of Fish that called themselves “Christian Coleman.” The victim developed a romantic relationship with the person, who claimed to be an engineer on an extended trip overseas. The victim ended up being connected with Amuzu, “to whom she transferred tens of thousands of dollars at Coleman’s direction.”
A third victim began an online romantic relationship with a person using the name “Hannah Arthur,” who he’d met on the dating website called “Rendezvous,” court records read. Arthur “directed him to send money and valuables to Amuzu, allegedly to help her pay taxes on millions of dollars in gold she was inheriting.”
A fourth person was reported to have been victimized by Amuzu, when the victim “began an online romantic relationship with ‘Noel Hernandez’ and was directed to send money to Amuzu’s PayPal account,” the complaint read.
According to the indictment, Amuzu then “laundered the proceeds of the scheme by making large wire transfers, including to countries in Africa, and representing to financial institutions that the transfers were for, among other things, purchasing a house and supporting family members.”
Amuzu is expected to appear in U.S. District Court for her arraignment next week.
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