81-yr-old American joins Nigerian in years-long identity theft for love’s sake, faces sentence

An 81-year-old American was so madly in love with a Nigerian scammer who faked an American citizen that she undertook criminal activities to please her man.

Glenda Seim has now pleaded guilty to being a money mule in an identity theft scheme for the scammer. Funds adding up to  $550,000 or $1.5 million, including her own social security handouts, were transferred to her lover between 2014 and 2021.

The 81-year-old woman received MoneyGram wire transfers from senders she did not know, depositing dirty funds into financial accounts she opened, and allowing her online boyfriend to fraudulently transfer funds from the financial accounts of various businesses into her financial accounts.

She also accepted unemployment insurance benefit payments on behalf of individuals she did not know despite warnings by wire transfer agencies, federal law enforcement representatives, bank representatives and others to forced closing of her financial accounts.

The online romance scam dates back to 2014. A man claimed to be a United States citizen with business interests in Nigeria. He asked for Seim’s assistance in paying fees, taxes, and penalties to the Nigerian government—that he had to pay up because his associates could not leave Nigeria unless he paid those funds.

According to the court document, Seim began sending him money from her Social Security retirement benefits and pension and later sold electronic equipment that he had others send to her in the mail and forward the funds to him.

United States District Court Judge Stephen Clark accepted Seim’s guilty plea on Tuesday.

Her sentence will be handed on February 10, 2022