Brooklyn Park Man Pleads Guilty to $2.3M Romance Fraud Scheme

ST PAUL, Minn. – A Brooklyn Park man has pleaded guilty to facilitating a national romance fraud scheme, announced U.S. Attorney Andrew M. Luger.

According to court documents, beginning in May 2018 through June 2022, Dodzi Kwame Kordorwu, 37, helped facilitate an online romance fraud scheme that targeted primarily elderly victims and lured them into sending money under false pretenses. The scheme relied on perpetrators impersonating a real or plausible but fictitious person, such as a senior U.S. diplomat or military official, that contacted the victims through online social media applications. The scheme participants then sought to forge a romantic connection with the victims. If successful, the scheme participants would then ask the victims for money purportedly to assist the false persona with some problem or need. Occasionally, the scheme participants would even introduce the victims to a purported third-party intermediary who would corroborate the false persona’s story and assist in defrauding the victims. The victims eventually were directed to send large sums of money by mail or other commercial means to a specified name and address.

In total, Kordorwu received over 90 victim packages containing approximately $2,231,998 in fraud proceeds throughout the scheme. Kordorwu kept some of the proceeds for his personal benefit and disbursed the remainder of the proceeds to other scheme participants.

Kordorwu pleaded guilty yesterday to one count of mail fraud in U.S. District Court before Judge Eric C. Tostrud. A sentencing hearing will be scheduled at a later date.

This case is the result of an investigation conducted by the FBI, the U.S. Postal Inspection Service, and a Digital Forensic Investigator with Hennepin County.

Assistant U.S. Attorneys Jordan L. Sing and Robert M. Lewis are prosecuting the case.