American commits suicide after being defrauded by Nigerian cybercriminals
A retired American teacher who resided in the eastern district of Tennessee has committed suicide after being defrauded by Nigerian cybercriminals who engaged him in a romance scam.
Penpushing reports that the fraud victim lost his life savings to a romance scam carried out by a network of fraudsters, including Nigerians living in the United States of America (USA) and Nigeria.
The court document showed that the American, identified simply as victim 1, was defrauded in a sextortion plot, resulting in the loss of over $80,000, a sum that made up his entire life-saving, and thereafter committed suicide in October 2023.
Penpushing further reports that the record revealed that the plot occurred from February to October 2023, while the criminal group generally operated between February 2023 and February 2024.
The members of the criminal network operating in Nigeria as at the time of filing this report have yet to be identified, while the two other members residing in the America have been convicted and sentenced to 16 years in prison.
Penpushing also reports that the two, Chinagorom Onwumere and Stephen Anagor, were sentenced by the United States of America (USA) District Court in Tennessee in December 2025 for their role in the international romance scam scheme.
The scheme equally involved a Sudanese woman, Salma Abdalkareem, who received a sentence of four years and three months’ imprisonment, while Onwumere and Abdalkareem had served as the group’s money mules, receiving payments from victims and sending them to Nigeria through a business account named Salmasam LLC.
Penpushing reports that the court papers showed that they were married and shared a residence in New Jersey, while Onwumere resided in Washington, and the charges against the three co-conspirators were detailed in a thirty-eight-count superseding indictment.
The sextortion plot started as interaction between the retired teacher and the Nigerian fraudsters as a romance scam, through a fake Google chat account, which the victim was deceived into believing that he was in a romantic relationship with a popular female actress.
Penpushing further reports that the celebrity’s identity was not revealed in the document, however, as the relationship grew, the scammer and the victim began exchanging intimate photos as a romantic gesture.
The criminal network in Nigeria shared a doctored “nude photo” of the celebrity they were impersonating to the victim, and later their interaction grew into a sextortion, and a few weeks after sending the photos, the Nigerian fraudsters impersonated high-level Federal Bureau of Investigation(FBI) officials and the United States of America(USA) Attorney General, claiming that the images had been leaked to the public and that the retired teacher was the prime suspect.
Penpushing also reports that they threatened the victim with criminal actions and demanded a series of fines, and first, they asked for a $1,500 “mandatory fee’, thereafter, they intensified the pressure by threatening the victim with false prosecution.
The fraudsters claimed that the Supreme Court had ordered him to pay tens of thousands of dollars to seal the case and shield it from public disclosure, and made the victim believe that if he didn’t do what they wanted, he would have to testify in front of his family publicly and everyone else about the affair.
Penpushing reports that due to the persistent harassment, the victim got two cashier’s cheques for $41,000 each, which were his life savings, and sent them to the network, yet the pressure continued, forcing the victim to send suicidal messages to them and shot himself through the mouth in October 2023.
“Salma Abdalkareem, Chinagorom Onwumere, Stephen O Anagor, and other persons who are known and unknown to the Grand Jury did knowingly and intentionally, with the intent to harass and intimidate this person, and attempted to cause and would be reasonably expected to cause substantial emotional distress to a person, that is, Victim 1’, the document reads.
“As a result, on or about October 23, 2023, the victim died. Victim 1’s cause of death was suicide, and the manner of death was an intraoral gunshot wound of the head’, it added.
Penpushing further reports that the emails, chat messages with the victim, a document containing the parties’ email and Google Chat correspondence showed that the victim was deceived into swearing an oath requiring them to provide mutual assistance.
“I promise to assist one another in anything, emotional and financial needs [sic]. Let this oath bind this love forever. Forever and forever till death do us part. The attorney’s $41,000 goes towards closing your case file’, it reads.
‘The $40,000 mandated by the Supreme Court seals all evidence, and whatever was against you will be null and void. This payment is very important unless you are prepared to appear in court with your entire family to defend yourself in front of the world’, the text added.
Penpushing also reports that another email threatening the victim for a late response read that if he ignore the message, for 10 hours, he pay $1,000 per hour until he respond, as record showed that all the money paid by the victim was sent to Nigeria to Onwumere and his wife, Abdalkareem.
The document equally showed that the two also received and laundered checks from seven other victims of the scam, and altogether, the network defrauded eight Americans of nearly $400,000, and as a result, the court ordered the convicts to pay $388,500 in restitution to the victims.
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