A Nigerian man has bee arrested in the United States over alleged online romance scam.
26-year-old Kelly Itive was arrested in Georgia last Friday on suspicion of theft and criminal impersonation, the El Paso County Sheriff’s Office said.
Reports said Itive fleeced two El Paso County women over $78,000 before he was arrested in Cobb County, Ga.
Authorities say he met his victims through social media, posing as a middle-aged white man with an engineering background.
He would woo women before asking for money, using fake bank websites to deceive the women into thinking he had the means to pay them back.
Between April of 2017 and February of 2018, investigators said Itive used fake bank websites to convince the women to send him money and had no intentions of paying them back.
Itive was originally from Nigeria and entered the United States in 2017 on a student visa. Investigators said Itive immediately started the scams when he arrived.
Itive was taken into custody Friday morning and will be scheduled for extradition back to Colorado to face charges of Theft and Criminal Impersonation.
