A Massachusetts woman believed she was in a committed relationship with “Williams Moore.” So did a New Jersey woman, who fell head over heels for her boyfriend, “Manuel Sykes.” A Florida woman met “Edward Nowak” online and believed him when he told her worked in Cyprus.
Turns out, they were all “dating” the same man—a married father of two young boys in Nigeria who worked in real estate and had a background in network marketing and sales.
His real name? Charles Uchenna Nwadavid. He pleaded guilty in Boston in June, admitting to charges of mail fraud, aiding and abetting money laundering, and money laundering.
According to court documents, Nwadavid was running a romance scam, in which criminals love-bomb lonely—often elderly—people on dating apps and social media to quickly gain their affections. The targets are often vulnerable women. Romance scams boomed during the pandemic and have since continued to haunt people over 60. According to the FBI, there were nearly 18,000 complaints about romance fraud in 2024, and some 7,600 victims were over age 60. The losses attributed to that age cohort totaled $389 million last year, with total losses among all age groups approximately $672 million.
A 66-year-old Montana woman involved in a different romance scam named Rita told authorities she lost more than $90,000 over nearly five months in 2024 after she fell for a “celebrity” who started asking her for money. She said she was vulnerable as she went through a divorce and became almost addicted to the texts she would get from her purported romantic partner.
“For me, these texts were like a drug,” she said. “Like, I needed them to live.”
Now, they make her sick and she said she feels like she lost her heart and soul by being scammed in the fake relationship.
“Hindsight is always 20-20,” Rita told the FBI, according to a June video. “But I wasn’t thinking with my brain, I was thinking with my heart.”
In addition to Nwadavid, authorities in June sentenced five people for running a $17 million romance and investment scam ring. Similarly, a Missouri woman admitted last month to aiding a Nigerian romance scam that netted $1 million and involved at least one victim in her early 70s.
Like in the other romance frauds, Nwadavid never met any of the six women involved in the romance scam in person, only communicating with them through email and text. As part of the scheme and to keep himself concealed, authorities said Nwadavid tricked his first victim, one of three women from Massachusetts, into opening a crypto account at Bitcoin of America. (Bitcoin of America was a crypto exchange headquartered in Chicago that has since ceased its operations.) Nwadavid then accessed her account and transferred the funds to Bitcoin wallets he controlled, authorities said.
From there, Nwadavid used the Massachusetts woman as a “money mule” to collect illicit funds from other unsuspecting women. From Jan. 2019 to June 2019, the New Jersey woman sent $896,000 to the money mule on behalf of her boyfriend, “Manuel Sykes.” The Florida woman sent $235,000; another Massachusetts woman sent about $276,000. A fifth woman sent $230,000 and the sixth sent $239,100.
Five of the women were told their “boyfriend” had been seriously injured in an oil rig fire and needed Bitcoin to pay his medical bills. The sixth woman, who lived in Great Bend, Kansas, believed her boyfriend “Clarence Manning” had inherited $2 million from his father but needed to travel to Spain to collect it. He then claimed to be hospitalized overseas.
At that point, Nwadavid allegedly tricked the first woman, his money mule, into transferring the $2.5 million she had collected from the other five women into her crypto account. Nwadavid then allegedly traversed 210 Bitcoin from her account through intermediary accounts and into two other accounts of his.
A lawyer for Nwadavid did not respond to Fortune’s request for comment. Authorities declined to comment given the case is still pending.
His sentencing is scheduled for September.
