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A federal court in Houston sentenced a 40-year-old Nigerian national, Leslie Chinedu Mba, to 19 years in prison on February 26 for his role in a five-year transnational fraud operation that combined romance scams and business email compromise to steal more than $4 million from American individuals and businesses, and then separately attempted to evade deportation through a series of fraudulent marriages.
US District Judge David Hittner of the Southern District of Texas ordered Mba to serve 228 months in federal custody after Mba pleaded guilty on December 4, 2025, to two counts: conspiracy to commit wire fraud and conspiracy to make false statements in immigration documents. Mba, who had been residing in Houston without legal status at the time of his arrest, is not a US citizen and will face formal removal proceedings upon completing his sentence. US Attorney Nicholas J. Ganjei, whose office brought the prosecution, was pointed about the destination that awaited Mba at the end of his sentence. “Now, Mba has prison to look forward to, followed by a one-way ticket back to Nigeria,” Ganjei said.
The fraud operation ran from April 2018 through December 2023 and involved participants both inside and outside the United States. According to court records, the scheme began abroad, where co-conspirators gained unauthorised access to legitimate business email accounts and manipulated payment instructions to redirect funds to bank accounts controlled by Mba and his associates in the United States.
Victims, many of them employees or owners of small businesses processing what they believed were routine payments to known suppliers or contractors, unwittingly transferred funds directly into the syndicate’s accounts.
“These online scams jeopardised the livelihood of family-run businesses, the ability of elderly individuals to retire, and exploited the trust that fuels our economy,” Ganjei said in his sentencing statement.
Mba’s designated role within the network was that of money mule, the layer of the operation responsible for receiving, holding, and redistributing fraudulent proceeds while maintaining a degree of distance from the initial deception. He opened bank accounts or repurposed existing ones specifically to receive incoming transfers from the scheme, then moved the funds further along the chain to other accounts and co-conspirators. Prosecutors said the total losses attributable to the operation exceeded $4 million, spread across multiple victims over the five-year period.
Separately, and running in parallel with the fraud, Mba pursued a systematic effort to remain in the United States through fraudulent means. After an initial immigration application was denied and he was formally ordered removed from the country, Mba attempted to obtain lawful permanent residency through multiple sham marriages,a pattern prosecutors described as a deliberate effort to remain on American soil while continuing to participate in the fraud network. It was this conduct that gave rise to the second count of the indictment, the conspiracy to make false statements in immigration documents, which carried its own statutory exposure.
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The romance scam component of the scheme drew particularly sharp condemnation from law enforcement officials. US Attorney Ganjei described romance fraud as among the most reprehensible categories of financial crime, noting its tendency to target elderly and isolated victims whose emotional vulnerability was deliberately exploited.
“Romance scams are among the lowest and most despicable forms of fraud because they prey upon the lonely and vulnerable, and disproportionately victimise senior citizens,” he said. FBI Houston Special Agent in Charge Jason Hudson was equally direct. “Out of all the frauds perpetrated by Leslie Mba and his co-conspirators, their weaponisation of romance scams to deliberately target vulnerable and elderly Americans is most disturbing,” Hudson said. “Romance scams cruelly manipulate trust, callously exploit the fear of loneliness, and leave victims both financially devastated and emotionally shattered.”
The scale of the problem those comments reference is significant. According to the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Centre, Americans reported losing $1.14 billion to romance scams in 2023 alone — the most recent full year for which official figures are available — making it one of the costliest categories of internet-enabled fraud by dollar value. Victims are disproportionately over 60, often recently widowed or divorced, and the psychological damage from discovering that a relationship they believed was genuine was an engineered deception frequently outlasts the financial loss.
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Four co-defendants, all Houston residents, had previously pleaded guilty in connection with the same scheme. Grace Morisho, 30, Rodgers Kadikilo, 30, and Kristin Smith, 38, received custodial sentences ranging from 15 to 25 months. Alexandra Golovko, 36, received five years of probation. The disparity between their sentences and Mba’s 228-month term reflected both the difference in their individual levels of culpability and the aggravating weight of Mba’s immigration fraud, which added a separate axis of criminal conduct to his prosecution.
The case was investigated by the FBI Houston Field Office with assistance from the Houston Police Department. Assistant US Attorney Alexander Alum prosecuted the matter on behalf of the government.
Mba remains in federal custody pending designation of a Bureau of Prisons facility by the Federal Bureau of Prisons.
No removal order had been formally entered as of the date of sentencing, as immigration proceedings are conducted separately from criminal proceedings and will commence following his release from federal custody.
