High life of crook who f leeced OAPs in £5m lottery swindle
A FRAUdSTeR who funded a playboy lifestyle by fleecing pensioners out of their life savings in a £5million lottery scam was jailed for seven years yesterday.
Godwin Nwaofor, 36, kept a ‘suckers list’ of potential victims to send bogus letters suggesting they had won the Australian lottery.
He received nearly £1million from the scam and blew the money on luxury cars, gold jewellery and champagne at exclusive nightclubs. Nwaofor wept as he was jailed yesterday, but Judge Richard Hone QC said he did not believe the remorse was genuine.
The judge said that although ten victims had been traced by prosecutors as having fallen for Nigerian-born Nwaofor’s scam, that was probably the ‘tip of the iceberg’.
‘This Australian lottery scam has brought penury and debt to your victims who were ruthlessly milked of their hard- earned savings,’ he said.
Nwaofor was a ‘willing and enthusiastic lieutenant’ to the mastermind of the con, another Nigerian, Frank Onyeachonam, who was nicknamed ‘ mr Fizzy’ for his love of vintage champagne. Onyeachonam was jailed for eight years last year.
The scam started with a bogus letter to vulnerable pensioners telling them they had won the Australian lottery. Sent by a ‘lottery agent’, the letters mainly targeted Americans and requested an ‘activation fee’ to release their ‘winnings’.
Believing they had had a stroke of good fortune, the victims complied – and lost their money. Nwaofor used a string of aliases to pull off the con and frequently switched addresses to avoid being caught. One victim flew from America to try to trace him, the Old Bailey heard.
Police, who fear the full cost of the fraud may be £30million, have identified 406 victims from two notebooks found at Onyeachonam’s penthouse where he was arrested.
They seized Louis Vuitton and Gucci goods along with luxury watches and shoes. They also found pictures of Onyeachonam flaunting his wealth, drinking champagne in clubs and waving wads of £50 notes. Nwaofor, of the Peabody estate in Camberwell Green, moved to the UK in January 2006 and married a German. He has two children with her, aged six and six months.
He was found guilty of conspiracy to defraud, converting criminal property and acquisition of crimi- nal property. He will serve half his sentence in prison and the rest on licence and will also now face confiscation proceedings.
Onyeachonam, of Canning Town, east London, was found guilty of conspiracy to defraud between January 2005 and december 2012.