VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. - A Ghanaian national was sentenced to more than three years in prison for wire fraud after investigators say he schemed to defraud women on a dating website.
Court documents say Richard Yaw Dorpe, 38, posed as a single, 57-year-old Virginia Beach man on "OurTime," a dating site for people over 50 years old. Dorpe presented himself as a jeweler who was traveling abroad to buy gold and other jewelry before coming back to Virginia Beach.
According to court documents, Dorpe met a 68-year-old recent widow from Chesapeake on the website and started an online romantic relationship with her.
Between August 2016 and January 2017, Dorpe convinced the woman to send clothes, jewelry, a computer, a watch and over $300,000 to him.
Court documents say the woman eventually realized she was a victim of a scam and was contacted by the FBI.
Dorpe will serve a total of 40 months in prison.
“The defendant repeatedly and shamelessly defrauded a recently widowed victim through a variety of manipulative tactics, leaving her in financial ruins,” said Raj Parekh, Acting U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia. “As this case demonstrates, reporting these scams to law enforcement helps us uncover the fraud schemes and bring scammers, like this defendant, to justice.”
