If you are just joining us, we are reviewing the court transcripts of a Business Email Compromise / Romance Scam Money Laundering case. Part One reveals “Classic Baggie: A Delaware BEC Case calls him the leader of an International Criminal Organization” and Part Two was called “Classic Baggie: Part 2 – How to run a Money Laundering Operation.”
Today, we’ll share the stories of three of the romance scam victims in this case. I would normally address them by their surnames as Mr. X or Mrs. Y out of respect, but to help protect their anonymity, I’m using only their first names.
Sally From Ohio
Sally was a 74-year old Ohio woman. Her husband of 42 years passed away in February of 2016.
Three years later, Sally joined several online dating websites, including Match.com.
In August 2019, she received a message from “Harry Oppenheimer” who was a 79-year old man
living in Chicago, a dual citizen of the US and Switzerland, and a semi-retired
aeronautical engineer. They talked daily by phone, text, or email and Sally believed
she would spend the rest of her days with him.
In September 2019, Mr. Oppenheimer began to ask Sally for financial favors. He claimed
he was selected as an independent contractor to rebuild a fleet of airplanes for KLM
Royal Dutch Airlines, who had wired him $3.5 Million Euros into his Swiss bank account
at Neue Privat Bank. His attorney, Phillip Richardson, said that he had to fly to
Switzerland to unfreeze the funds. He provided Sally with a bank statement showing
his account held 5,239,800.38 Euros.
In order to unfreeze the account, his attorney needed him to bring a “refundable deposit”
of $240,000.
The Email from the attorney read:
“I really abhor putting your hopes up, but I can guarantee we can resolve this
muddle amicably by resulting into making the payment of the refundable $240,000
security deposit. This will help in securing the money laundering certificate,
as well as qualify Harry Oppenheimer to be cleared by anti-terrorist and money
laundering departments. It will also hasting up the process of the funds release.
Please be advised that this is a mere suggestion as I still need to contact
authorities involved in this, those Harry worked with/for, to
[…]
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