All You Need to Know About Hajia4Real’s Sentence
Ghanaian social media influencer, Mona Faiz Montrage, popularly known as Hajia4Real has been sentenced to 12 months and one day in prison in the United States of America where she was standing trial for conspiracy to commit and committing wire fraud and money laundering.
After pleading guilty to conspiracy to receive stolen money, she received her sentence from U.S. District Judge J. Paul Oetken on June 28, 2024.
In addition to the prison term, the 32-year-old was sentenced to three years of supervised release and order to forfeit $216,475 and pay restitution in the amount of $1,387,458.
Romance Scam
She was found to have engaged in a series of frauds against 40 individuals and businesses in the U.S including romance scams from around 2013 to 2019 as a member of a “criminal enterprise” based in West Africa.
A statement released by the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, Damian Williams, on July 1 said she targeted older people and vulnerable and controlled bank accounts that received over $2 million in fraudulent funds for the Enterprise.
Her victims, it said, were tricked into sending the money.
“Among the false pretences used to induce victims to send money to MONTRAGE were payments to transport gold to the U.S. from overseas, payments to resolve a fake Federal Bureau of Investigation (“FBI”) investigation, and payments to assist a fake U.S. Army officer in receiving funds from Afghanistan.”
“Many of the Enterprise’s romance scam victims were vulnerable, older men and women who lived alone,” it added.
The enterprise got its victims hooked up through emails, text messages, and social media messages that deceived the victims into believing that they were in romantic relationships with a person who was, in fact, a fake identity assumed by members of the Enterprise.
“Once members of the Enterprise had successfully convinced victims that they were in a romantic relationship and had gained their trust, they convinced the victims, under false pretences, to transfer money to bank accounts the victims believed were controlled by their romantic interests, when, in fact, the bank accounts were controlled by members of the Enterprise.”
