Ghanaian ‘million dollar scammer’ loses latest bid for pretrial release in San Francisco

April 15, 2024

A Ghanaian green card holder, said to be a prime mover in a series of scams that cheated vulnerable seniors and large corporations alike, will stay in pretrial detention after a federal judge in San Francisco today refused to overturn a decision by a judge in Atlanta to keep him behind bars.

Prosecutors say that George Aboagye stole nearly a million dollars from a San Francisco real estate investment firm after staff were fooled in to wiring money to a fake supplier. Elderly men in California and Wisconsin were also gulled into paying hundreds of thousands of dollars to fictitious women. There are “possibly hundreds” of victims.

The court was told that Aboagye has been defrauding Americans from the moment he arrived in the United States in 2014 – racking up arrests that year for identity theft and, in 2015, for credit card fraud.

Aboagye was indicted for wire fraud in February 2024 by a grand jury in the Northern District of California. He was arrested in Atlanta where a federal judge ordered him sent to San Francisco and refused his bid for pretrial release on the grounds that he was an obvious flight risk.

This morning U.S. Magistrate Judge Alex Tse said he lacked the authority to revisit that decision. In any event, he pointed out, a surety proposed by Aboagye was an uncle he had not met in a quarter of a century and was therefore unsatisfactory.

Aboagye will next appear on May 23 before U.S. District Judge Rita Lin. He was told that he could ask her to release him or seek to persuade the original judge in Atlanta to revisit the issue.

There are two other codefendants in the case.

In December 2019 scammers hacked the email account of an employee of a San Francisco real estate investment firm – one with a large portfolio of properties around the Bay Area. The fraudsters were able to impersonate the account owner and inveigle another staff member to wire $922,445.34 to a bank account, which they were told was the account of a supplier, but was in fact controlled by Aboagye.

Almost immediately on the arrival of the funds, prosecutors say, money was transferred to other accounts owned by Aboagye and his two codefendants.

In July 2022 an elderly man living in Poway, CA fell victim to a romance scam having met an individual purporting to be “Jennifer Anderson” on the internet. The senior was told that the woman needed help with travel costs and legal fees relating to an inheritance she had received in Europe. He wired $55,000 to an account controlled by Aboagye who, shortly afterwards, transferred $48,000 to another account – one set up in the name of his alias ”Jordan Frazier”.

A Georgia driver’s license bearing Aboagye’s photograph and a false name

Prosecutors also detailed that another elderly man, in Wisconsin, met an individual holding themselves out to be “Bella Quinn” on the internet. The man was gulled into mailing $318,400 in cashier’s checks directly to “Uncle George” Aboagye. He later sent a $45,000 cashier’s check to another account set up using an alias of Aboagye which was then used for the fraudster’s personal expenses.

Prosecutors say that – based solely on the offenses carried out against these three victims – Aboagye faces a sentence of between 46-57 months’ imprisonment. They say there may be hundreds of victims.

Aboagye arrived in the US in 2014. He was arrested that year in Georgia for identity theft and again the next year for fraudulent use of a credit card.

The court was told that Aboagye had made so much money from his scams that he paid cash for a Mercedes-Benz sports utility vehicle and had it shipped to Ghana. Aboagye also wired over $1.7 million to a bank account in Ghana apparently in the name of his relatives. He travels regularly to the country.

In interviews with law enforcement officials Aboagye admitted only to taking a cut of funds he wired on behalf of others who had engaged in fraudulent activity. However on his phone investigators found an application for a six month United Kingdom visa and found evidence that he was romantically linked to a woman living in the country that he referred to as “My 1 and Only”.

It appeared to investigators that Aboagye was building multiple apartment buildings in Ghana which, they surmised, accounted for the staggering sums being sent to the country.

Two men suspected to be Aboagye’s accomplices have also been detained: Dennis Jordan was arrested in Dallas and Emmanuel Awuah was held in Boston.

Jordan – whose “financial fingerprints are all over one of the key transactions” that arose from the San Francisco firm being defrauded – is now in federal custody in California. In his case the court’s attention was drawn to numerous false identities established by him. Born in Ghana, Jordan is a citizen of both that country and the U.S.