How United States-based Zimbabwean Woman Swindled US$1.2 Million in Romance Scams
A 33-year-old Zimbabwean woman, Sherlyn Sims, also known as Sherlyn Dzinzi, has been convicted by a jury in Atlanta, United States, for her laundering money from romance scams and business email compromise schemes.
During the five-day trial, the court heard how Sims diverted over US$1.2 million to numerous bank accounts that she controlled. She would then quickly transfer, withdraw, and spend the money.
Sims faced charges of conspiracy and money laundering for receiving funds stolen from dozens of victims between December 2019 and August 2020. Sims and her co-defendants registered several fake businesses, including “Grace Trading, LLC” in Georgia, which had no legitimate operations or employees. They would then open bank accounts for these sham companies and dupe victims into depositing funds into the accounts.
For instance, just two days after Grace Trading was registered with the Georgia Secretary of State, she opened business bank accounts at J.P. Morgan Chase Bank and Bank of America. Shortly after, approximately $200,000 from fraud victims was deposited into these accounts. Sims swiftly wired the money to China and other countries, withdrew cash, and spent or transferred the remaining funds.
Over the following seven months, more than US$1.2 million in fraud proceeds were deposited into these accounts from romance scams and business email compromise schemes. One of the incidents involved a scam that tricked a victim into sending the earnest money deposit for the purchase of a new home to Sims’s Grace Trading account. Whenever the banks caught on and closed the fraudulent accounts, Sims would simply open new ones in the sham businesses’ names. She also managed to obtain a COVID-19 relief loan from the Small Business Administration using the sham companies.
Multiple romance fraud victims testified at the trial, recounting how they were convinced they were in relationships with strangers they had met online. These supposed suitors would often claim they needed financial assistance, such as help paying taxes, in order to travel and be with the victims. One victim depleted her life savings and borrowed from friends and family trying to help her “boyfriend” who was supposedly detained by customs. The romance fraud victim was persuaded to send nearly US$100,000 to one of Sims’s accounts because her boyfriend claimed that he was travelling to Boston but had been detained by customs officials and would not be released until his taxes were paid.
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