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CALIFORNIAN police are on the lookout for a Nigerian fraudster who used the Christian website www.ChristianMingle.com to fleece an American woman of $500,000 using the pseudo name David Holmes claiming he was an Irish citizen.  In a ruthless exploitation of love, the Nigerian scammer hooked up with the 66-year old woman online falsely claiming to be an Irishman who worked in the oil industry. According to the Santa Clara District Attorney’s Office, he then said he worked on a Scottish oil rig and his profile picture turned out to be a picture of a male model downloaded from the Internet.  Although the two wanna-be lovers never met in person, they talked over the phone and the Mr Holmes even sent the woman flowers. Eventually he convinced her to loan him $300,000 for his oil business, which she subsequently wired to him from her retirement account.  To come up with the money, the woman had to not only dip into her retirement account but also refinance her house. After wiring him an additional $200,000 to a bank in Turkey, however, the woman got suspicious and informed the district attorney’s office.  Cherie Bourland of the fraud unit called the bank in Turkey and was successfully able to freeze the funds before Mr Holmes’ associate Wisdom Onokpite showed up to withdraw the money. Mr Onokpite was arrested by the Turkish National Police on suspicion of committing fraud and the Californian police office traced Mr Holmes to Nigeria but he remains at large.  While the woman was able to get her $200,000 back, Ms Bourland says there is just a 1% chance she’ll recover the over $300,000. She added that the funds are impossible to track down and federal authorities do not generally investigate losses below $1m.  Ms Bourland added: ” You get the love drug in you and you end up getting duped. Reports of lost money on dating sites has been on the rise, especially among the elderly.”  Dating site ChristianMingle.com’s slogan is Find God’s Match for You and knowing how popular the site is, scammers have begun targeting it. Nigeria has a very passionate Christian community which accounts for about half of its 170m population.
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