{"id":125549,"date":"2022-05-06T09:48:37","date_gmt":"2022-05-06T13:48:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=125549"},"modified":"2022-05-06T09:56:08","modified_gmt":"2022-05-06T13:56:08","slug":"fake-serviceman-gets-14-years","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=125549","title":{"rendered":"Fake Serviceman Gets 14 Years"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

In a story put out by the Associated Press, several news outlets including Military.com are reporting that a man received a sentence of fourteen years for his role in a dating scheme where he falsely posed as a military member.<\/p>\n

Man Who Posed as Service Member in Dating Scheme Gets 14-Year Sentence<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

4 May 2022\u00a0 |\u00a0 Associated Press<\/p>\n

CAMDEN, N.J. \u2014 A man who helped dupe dozens into sending millions of dollars to people posing as U.S. military personnel in an online dating scheme has been sentenced to 14 years in federal prison.<\/p>\n

Rubbin Sarpong, 38, of Millville, New Jersey, must also pay more than $3 million in restitution to 36 victims under the sentence imposed Tuesday, as well as more than $385,000 to the Internal Revenue Service. He had pleaded guilty last November to conspiracy to commit wire fraud and money laundering and tax evasion counts.<\/p>\n

Federal prosecutors say the scheme ran from January 2016 to September 2019. They say Sarpong and his co-conspirators, several of whom live in Ghana, set up phony profiles on online dating sites using fictitious or stolen identities and posing as U.S. military personnel.<\/p>\n

They eventually pretended to forge romantic relationships with at least 40 victims overall and sought money from them, often purportedly to ship gold bars to the United States. The conspirators told many victims that their money would be returned once the gold bars were received in the United States, but instead it was withdrawn in cash, wired to other domestic bank accounts and to other conspirators in Ghana.<\/p>\n

Sarpong received roughly $1.14 million in taxable income from the scheme but didn\u2019t file income tax returns and paid no income tax, prosecutors said.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

What happens in Ghana should stay in Ghana.<\/p>\n

This seems to be a pretty lucrative business model. I can envision them having signs around Ghana saying “Dating Scams 101 Lecture at 7pm” and they teach this stuff to each other.<\/p>\n

The technique of using a false profile to dupe others is known as “Catfishing.”<\/p>\n

The odd thing here is the authorities seemed more concerned about not paying taxes than any violation of Stolen Valor. Oh, well.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In a story put out by the Associated Press, several news outlets including Military.com are reporting … Fake Serviceman Gets 14 Years<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":663,"featured_media":125550,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[408],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-125549","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-stolen-valor"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/125549","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/663"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=125549"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/125549\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":125552,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/125549\/revisions\/125552"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/125550"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=125549"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=125549"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=125549"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}