A Brooklyn Park man received more than five years in prison Tuesday for perpetrating with others a nationwide romance fraud scheme for four years and pulling in more than $2.1 million.
Dodzi K. Kordorwu, 38, was sentenced in U.S. District Court in St. Paul to a 5¼-year term after pleading guilty to the online ruse that targeted dozens of primarily older people.
Judge Eric Tostrud also ordered Kordorwu to be under court supervision for three years after his release and to make full restitution of the money he stole.
The FBI says about 24,000 victims in the United States reported losing about $1 billion to romance scams in 2021. Researchers say romance scammers prey specifically on seniors, some capitalizing on the isolation of the COVID-19 pandemic to find lonely victims.
Ahead of sentencing, prosecutors argued in a court filing for Kordowu to be given a sentence of nearly seven years in prison.
While taking on the persona of “Dr. Carmen Williams” to interact with one victim, Kordowu “directly expressed his love [and] promised to never leave them,” the prosecution filing read.
Upon receiving a monetary shipment, Kordorwu followed up with “‘thank you so much my sweet and beautiful wife. I love you, and I will always love you,’” the filing continued. “The deeply personal connections forged by these overtures is what made the fraud scheme so potent.”
The defense proposed in writing to the court for a sentence of probation that Kordorwu had a limited role in the scam, the crime was nonviolent in nature and “Mr. Kordorwu is the sole person being held responsible for the offense.”
