He claimed to be an American major general, charming lonely British women through online dating sites with stories of his bravery dodging bombs and saving lives.

But in reality the dashing war hero they fell in love with was Ghanaian fraudster Maurice Asola Fadola, who conned victims out of £800,000 to pay for his lavish mansion in his homeland.

Yesterday Fadola was unmasked as one of the world’s most prolific online dating fraudsters as he was jailed for five years in Ghana for a series of international romance scams. He targeted women across Britain, France, Sweden, Italy and the US.

The conman, thought to be in his 40s, preyed on at least 19 British victims by peddling an elaborate web of lies.

He said he needed cash to pay for a legal dispute to get his war medals, emergency medical treatment, customs charges or even to buy his way out of the army.

Using pictures of US servicemen sourced from the web, he duped other women into bogus investment schemes and lured them to Ghana where he posed as an official overseeing the money transaction, impressing his victims with his towering gold-plated and marble-clad villa in Accra.

Some of his victims were left penniless and homeless.

Dena White, of Market Weighton, East Yorkshire, lost her home after using £50,000 of her savings and re-mortgaging her property in 2009 to help the man she knew as Steve Moon in a legal dispute over the impounding of his war medals.

Fadola convinced the 57-year-old widow, who had just lost her husband of 26 years to cancer, that he could not get access to his cash because he was serving in Iraq.
The pair chatted through a dating website for hours each day. She said: ‘Of course I was wary but everything he told me seemed to check out.

'He’d send me poetry. It sounds silly now but we were in love.’

A 52-year-old victim, a married mother of two, lost £271,000 after paying to release a suitcase supposedly containing £5.2million which her online US soldier boyfriend said he had smuggled out of Iraq.

It was Fadola’s attempts to seek a British visa which was to be his undoing. It disclosed his true identity to the National Crime Agency which was working with the Ghanaian police in connection with the case of a disabled woman who was persuaded to sell her house and send funds to Ghana.

Fadola was arrested by Ghana’s Serious Fraud Office in April 2010. The NCA flew five victims to give evidence against him in 2012 during his lengthy trial in Ghana.

Yesterday he was ordered to pay his victims back after being found guilty of over 20 offences, including deception.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2816580/US-general-conned-800-000-lonely-British-women-Ghanian-fraudster-posed-senior-military-official-pay-lavish-mansion-homeland.html#ixzz3HoaWWDru
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Woow...lets clap for him

DAT house is damn too....

I am here just to read comments

So military fmt still dey pay

This guy is not a ghanaian .. Asola Fadola is not a ghanaian name!

who in their ryt minds would believe that man is ghanaian with a name like that? .... thats clearly a nigerian name

chokl8candie:
who in their ryt minds would believe that man is ghanaian with a name like that? .... thats clearly a nigerian name

Uk dailymail has done enough harm already by not getting their facts right!

How is Asola Fadola a Ghanaian name? JOKE OF THE MILLENNIUM!!!

Just google the name Fadola, you will see names like Oluwatobi Fadola, oluyemi fadola, Fadola Adeola, etc. .

Fadola is a Yoruba name and Yorubas are Nigerians. The guy may be living in Ghana and holding a Ghanaian passport like many other Nigerians, but the fraudster is OMO YORUBA dragging the name of my beloved country to the mud

@ iamord, you live in naija so you should know that name is Yoruba. You should have said it, than to say it's not a Ghanaian name ... And the Nigerians commenting aren't mentioning the fact that his name is YORUBA

BTW, if this guy wasn't a Nigerian but a Ghanaian, the story would have made front page within seconds and the Ghana bashing would have started

That's clearly a yoruba man. Damn these nigerians are determine to bring our name down

but some ghanian bear yoruba names.
But these is nigeria.
Who know the meaning of asola

I'm a yoruba man and I can tell you all that those names - ASola, Fadola, has no meaning what so ever in Yoruba language.

IloveGH:
How is Asola Fadola a Ghanaian name? JOKE OF THE MILLENNIUM!!!

Just google the name Fadola, you will see names like Oluwatobi Fadola, oluyemi fadola, Fadola Adeola, etc. .

Fadola is a Yoruba name and Yorubas are Nigerians. The guy may be living in Ghana and holding a Ghanaian passport like many other Nigerians, but the fraudster is OMO YORUBA dragging the name of my beloved country to the mud

@ iamord, you live in naija so you should know that name is Yoruba. You should have said it, than to say it's not a Ghanaian name ... And the Nigerians commenting aren't mentioning the fact that his name is YORUBA

BTW, if this guy wasn't a Nigerian but a Ghanaian, the story would have made front page within seconds and the Ghana bashing would have started

Lol bro I had to leave it for others to judge but. I know the name sounds yoruba. More investigation has to be done on the matter. There are loop holes in the immigration dept

An easy way to scam people is to put yourself in a position that they would think they can scam you easily. The scammer and the scammee are the same.

CONi man die CONi man burry am.

JiggamanGh:
That's clearly a yoruba man. Damn these nigerians are determine to bring our name down

Yeah!, for driving away my chic.

Ghanaians are good at copying everything Nigerian both good and bad but it seems that this one is trying to beat records set by Nigerians.

The bad thing about being Black is if you do something bad no matter where yu come fol in Africa. People will still associate you with Nigeria.

chokl8candie:
who in their ryt minds would believe that man is ghanaian with a name like that? .... thats clearly a nigerian name

if his name is your problem you can change it to Kofi. Or better still we can lend you Emeka or Segun to give him but it didn't change the fact that he is a full blooded Ghanaian. We're teaching you Ghanaians to be copying good things from us but you decided to be copying only the bad ones