Online Dating, Marriage : Direct Highway To Enduring Bliss, Or Ruin?

Jay Clayton, the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, and Christopher G. Raia, Assistant Director in Charge of the New York Field Office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, FBI, on August 8, 2025 announced the indictment of four Ghanaian nationals. This was sequel to the extradition of three of them to the US by Ghanaian authorities. The fourth suspect, Patrick Kwame Asare, is on the run. 
Isaac Oduro Boateng (“Kofi Boat”) 36, Inusah Ahmed (“Pascal”) 40, Derrick Van Yeboah (“Van”), 40 and Patrick Kwame Asare (“Borgar”), 39, were charged for their roles in an international criminal organization that stole over $100 million (about 56,583 billion FCFA) from victims via romance scams and business email compromises. Prosecutors said the scheme ran from about 2016 to May 2023, with workers convincing dozens of victims they were in relationships with the scammers. 
Online dating platforms serve a very useful purpose. Bringing single, divorced and widowed people into relationships which could become durable. Such as marriage. While these platforms might not have attracted much attention in Cameroon before, the trend has been upturned in recent years. With an increasing number of Cameroonians turning to the Internet, social media and dating applications in the hope of finding a friend or contracting marriage. 
It is thus common nowadays to meet Cameroonians in genuine relationships and marriages that began online. While some are “Cameroonian-Cameroonian” couples, many tend to be Cameroonian ladies and men who have gotten married or made friends with their Western partners. However, online fraudsters have been cashing in on the exciting development to swindle unsuspecting victims of their hard-earned cash. Commonly referred to as online romance scams or fraud, the scammers target mostly wealthy, elderly Western men and women. 
Scammers work very hard - often late into the night - stalking online dating sites for victims they cynically refer to as “clients.” And when the clients get attracted, the fraudsters are willing to lavish them with gifts, while waiting patiently for cash to start flowing into their accounts. Swindlers often pass for...