Nigerian Man Arrested In The US For Impersonation

Kazeem Owonla faces charges of that he set up an online dating profile using a photo of Montana's attorney general and falsified stories about overseas business problems to scam several women.

Felony charges against Kazeem Owonla were filed
last month in Indiana, where one woman reported sending more than $100,000 to a man who represented himself as John Tony Hagan, an electrical engineer who was working in Egypt.

Owonla, 44, was arrested Wednesday when he got off an airplane in Atlanta and waived extradition to Indiana Thursday during a hearing in Clayton County Magistrate Court. Clayton County records did not indicate if Owonla has an attorney.

The Indiana woman who first complained said she met "Hagan" online in January 2014 and by the next month he was asking her for money.

The woman said Hagen told her he needed money to replace his stolen tools. She said she sent him $5,600. The woman also responded to requests for $12,000 to pay his workers and for $25,000 to replace money that was supposedly stolen when his interpreter was stabbed after they made a bank withdrawal. In June, the woman provided investigators with receipts showing she wired or made bank transfers totaling more than $100,000 to the man she believed was Hagan, court records said.

A deputy found the bank transfers from the woman were ending up in an account owned by Owonla, who was in the U.S. on a visitor's visa last year.

The investigation also turned up a $1,550 bank transfer from an Ohio woman who told a similar story.

The photo used on the Hagan profile was taken from Montana Attorney General Tim Fox's campaign website without his permission.

In August, Spokesman for Fox, John Barnes, said the attorney general was upset his image was used. He noted the con artist chose the photo of someone who oversees consumer protection and warns citizens of scams. 

culled

photo credit- huffington post