Investigator traced a $21,000 business scam to Stafford’s account
Garrick Stafford, 49, a quality inspector at a machine shop in Tyler, an East Texas city known as the Rose Capital of America, lost $65,000 and unwittingly moved about $50,000 for an international crime ring after nearly two years of messages with an online acquaintance using the name Sarah Williams. Richland County Sheriff’s Department investigator Markus Johnson traced a $21,000 business scam to money in Stafford’s accounts and found the romance persona was shared by a married couple in Nigeria. The Wall Street Journal’s investigation showed how the couple used Stafford and other victims to move stolen funds into cryptocurrency wallets and overseas bank accounts.
Stafford, a soft-spoken churchgoer, loves motorcycles, camping and fishing. He lives in a bus-size motor home, a remnant of his time on the road as a welding inspector for large construction projects. When Sarah first sent him a friend invitation in May 2023, the come-on was so casual it did not raise alarms — she started off by asking him to tell her about himself. She soon asked for $150 to cover her cellphone bill. “Someone’s asking for money right off the bat,” Stafford initially thought, and he blocked her for months. “My mistake,” he said later, “was unblocking her.” By Christmas that year, he realized he missed her.
Once he let her back in, they spent nearly two years texting about movies and making plans to meet, though it never seemed to work out. Typically around 11 each night, they texted about what they had for dinner or their future. Phone calls were rare, he said, “like pulling teeth.” Stafford said he knew he wasn’t the best-looking guy or wealthy enough to attract attention from someone as glamorous as Sarah, whose pictures included fashion and bikini shots. “Why would you want to be with an overweight, broke dude?” he texted at one point, adding that he was struggling as it was and could not afford a family right now.
Requests for money increased to several thousand dollars for a seminar in digital design, seed money for an antiques business and medical costs for Sarah’s mother. Over nearly two years, Stafford said he depleted $15,000 in savings and accumulated another $15,000 in credit-card debt. He applied for a $55,000 loan. “I have good credit, but thank God they only approved $35,000,” he said. His late father helped clear the credit-card balance, while Stafford continued making payments on the loan.
The antiques business became the bridge to money movement. In February last year, Sarah asked Stafford to provide his bank account and routing information so she could direct a $2,000 payment into his account. He initially refused, but sent the information the next day. Whenever money arrived, Sarah pressed him to transfer it to cryptocurrency wallets, sometimes requiring him to leave work. Banks soon froze some of the other accounts she had him set up after suspecting illegal activity.
Stafford said about $50,000 moved through his account or the other accounts he established for Sarah. Another $100,000 in bad checks she sent him bounced. Sarah said she could not open her own accounts or make the transfers because of bad credit or a move from Miami to London.
The case reflects a broader shift described in the reporting: thieves increasingly use romance-scam victims not only to drain savings but also to gain access to the U.S. financial system and move money for other schemes. “They’re looking for a U.S. citizen with a pulse,” Johnson said. “If that person happens to have some money they can steal in the process, that’s an added bonus.”
As scams surge nationwide, the “lonely hearts” ruse remains a classic, according to the report: con artists, who could be prisoners on contraband cellphones or overseas syndicates, prey on vulnerable people seeking companionship. National Consumers League vice president John Breyault said spreading ill-gotten gains across more accounts helps U.S. criminals avoid attention from banking regulators. “Romantic interest is a very strong emotion,” he said. “Scammers recognize this and devote a lot of time to develop the trust needed to exploit the victim.”
Johnson, an army veteran, had been looking into the case of a Columbia, South Carolina, home builder scammed out of about $21,000 by a fraudster using an email address slightly different from that of a brick supplier. The increasingly common ruse has ensnared businesses and even local governments. When Johnson traced the calls and emails behind the scam, the trail led to scammers in Nigeria. When he followed the money, it led to Stafford in Texas.
During an October call, Johnson reached Stafford while he and his siblings were at a funeral home choosing an urn for their father’s ashes. Johnson asked why $21,000 from the business scam had ended up in Stafford’s account. Stafford replied, “That was for my girlfriend,” and then caught himself. His answer brought his doubts back into focus.
Johnson’s investigation found that the woman calling herself Sarah was not a Miami makeup artist. The persona was played by a married couple in Nigeria who took turns impersonating her and sometimes allowed AI to answer Stafford’s texts. The couple was part of a wider operation that used Stafford and dozens of other people as unwitting money mules, moving stolen funds into crypto wallets and overseas accounts.
Johnson also traced the photographs used in the messages to a woman he described as having a normal office job and some prior modeling work. Johnson said scammers had obtained her pictures and posted them across dating and classified sites, where they were used to lure additional victims. The woman declined an interview, told Johnson she had sympathy for the victims — members of her own family had been scammed in the past — and said she could not regain control of her image.
Through warrants, Johnson mapped the scammers’ emails, phone numbers and cryptocurrency accounts. He messaged the fraudsters to let them know he was on their trail, insinuating he would sit back and see who would crack first. One drafted a formal letter denying knowledge of illegal activity and pledging to help the investigator. The scammer also recorded calls, giving Johnson transcripts of the group trying to keep its stories straight, scrambling to remember which phones or computers they used for various ploys, and debating which devices to destroy. “They start calling each other, turning on each other, freaking out,” Johnson said.
Johnson contacted officials in Nigeria to try to hand the case to someone who could prosecute it but received no response. He also forwarded his findings to the U.S. State Department Office of Special Investigations in Nigeria but never learned the outcome. The State Department did not respond to a request for comment. Earlier this month, the Justice Department announced the arrest of dozens of people and the elimination of 3.7 million social-media accounts in an operation targeting West African scammers, with help from international law enforcement and technology companies.
Stafford’s experience follows a pattern: victims or other accomplices typically shift money from their own accounts into crypto wallets controlled by the scammers, who then might split the money into smaller batches and move them through other accounts to complicate the trail. In Stafford’s case, the money ended up in overseas bank accounts beyond the reach of Johnson’s warrants. That helps explain why scam victims often have little chance of recovering their losses. Some unwitting accomplices become criminals: in 2021, an 81-year-old Missouri woman pleaded guilty to identity theft after helping a man she considered a long-term love interest, despite never meeting him and receiving repeated warnings from banks and law enforcement that he was using her for his rip-offs.
Stafford said Johnson’s call brought anger and betrayal, but also something else. “It was actually a big relief,” he said. “I’d had this gut feeling for a long time. It wasn’t love toward the end. I was being used like a mule.”