https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2024/04/25/romance-scams-criminal-sentenced/73455809007/

A 50-year-old Florida man who pleaded guilty to being involved in an elaborate romance scheme that conned at least three women out of $2.3 million has been sentenced to four years in federal prison.

A federal judge in the Southern District of Florida sentenced Niselio Barros Garcia Jr. of Windermere on Tuesday after he admitted in January to being a "part of a network of individuals who laundered proceeds of fraud from romance scams, business email compromises and other fraud schemes," according to a Justice Department news release.

Garcia's role in the operation was supplying bank accounts to his co-conspirators so the group could receive money from the scams, the U.S. Attorney's Office said. Once Garcia received the fraud proceeds, he used cryptocurrency exchange to conceal the "nature, location and source" of the money before transferring the illicit funds to his accomplices in Nigeria, according to a federal indictment.

One of the group's victims sent over $104,448 to Garcia's bank account, the indictment says. Garcia then sent wire transfers to one of his partners in exchange for a fee, the indictment continued.

Garcia's attorney did not immediately respond to USA TODAY's request for comment.

How did the romance scheme work?

Garcia and four other men deceived women, who ranged in age from the 40s to the 80s, by wooing them over phone calls, text messages and emails, according to the indictment. The men would eventually request money to help pay for an overseas oil sale, loans and other expenses, the court document said.

For the overseas oil sale, one woman sent $29,000 to the one of the men. But unbeknownst to her, the money went into the bank account Garcia controlled, according to the indictment.

Garcia's co-conspirators remain at large, feds say

As part of his money laundering plea deal, Garcia was ordered to forfeit about $465,000 in proceeds he received from the scheme, the U.S. Attorney's Office said. The other four men, who are all residents of Nigeria, remain at large, according to the Justice Department release.

“This case demonstrates the department’s continued commitment to prosecuting transnational fraud and those who knowingly facilitate it,” Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General Brian Boynton, head of the Justice Department’s Civil Division, said in the release. “By facilitating the concealment of illicit profits, third-party money launderers enable large-scale transnational fraud schemes."