A Bavarian mother of four who worked as her husband’s company accountant has been placed under investigation for fraud after siphoning off €1.5 million to send to an African romance scam gang operating from the Ivory Coast.
The woman from the Donau-Ries district north of Augsburg made 39 separate transfers into Swiss accounts over more than a year before realising she had been deceived by criminals posing as an American soldier named “Ruiz Calvo” on dating platform Lovescout24.
Despite speaking to her fictitious lover only twice by telephone, she continued transferring her husband’s business funds to accounts controlled by the gang, believing the soldier faced financial difficulties and needed assistance.
One member of the network, 29-year-old asylum seeker Daouda T., has been convicted and sentenced to 18 months imprisonment at Augsburg Regional Court. The defendant, who appeared wearing an ankle bracelet, served as a logistics coordinator for the Ivory Coast-based operation, according to prosecutors.
The scam unravelled when the woman grew suspicious and contacted police in September 2024, subsequently confessing to her husband. Following their joint complaint, she received an email from “interpolpoliizei@gmail.com” claiming she could recover her money by paying a €13,700 “procedure opening fee.”
Police instructed the woman to maintain contact whilst insisting on a German bank account, leading investigators to a man in Verden, Lower Saxony, who had provided his banking details at his brother-in-law’s request. That brother-in-law was arrested in Paris in July 2025 and extradited to Germany for trial.
Court documents revealed Daouda T. controlled 86 bank accounts and posed as “Jennifer” to target German men, though his involvement as the soldier character remains unconfirmed. The network victimised 17 individuals across Germany, extracting substantial sums before the investigation uncovered the operation.
The investigating officer told the court the scammer claimed to be on foreign deployment without access to an account containing €1.3 million, requesting the victim help him “buy the account back from the French state.”
Daouda T. gambled away his share of the proceeds on sports betting, his defence attorney Florian Engert stated, arguing “he committed the crime out of financial hardship.” Judge Stefan Lindig convicted him of attempted commercial and gang fraud.
Germany has emerged as particularly vulnerable to romance scams, with 2025 losses reaching approximately €380 million—representing 86 per cent of all EU recorded losses from such fraud. The proliferation of AI-generated video technology has significantly enhanced scammers’ capabilities to assume false identities.
Women statistically fall victim more frequently than men, with criminals targeting isolated, lonely individuals and exploiting their emotions over extended periods.
