A U.S. federal judge has sentenced Kayode Adeniyi, one of auto dealer Adesuwa Ogoizee’s co-conspirators in a romance scam, to three and half years’ imprisonment after he pleaded guilty before the U.S. District Court for the District of New Mexico, documents seen by Peoples Gazette showed.

Mr Adeniyi, alias Mickey Marley, pleaded guilty to charges of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and fraud in connection with computers before Judge Kea W. Riggs on December 12, 2021.

“The defendant is hereby committed to the custody of the Federal Bureau of Prisons to be imprisoned for a total term of 41 months,” Judge Riggs ruled. Mr Adeniyi also faces deportation after his terms, which would run concurrently at Cibola County Correctional Center.

The Gazette had reported that the FBI arrested Ms Ogiozee, alongside Mr Adeniyi, Olutayo Sunday Ogunlaja, a 37-year-old Nigerian based in Atlanta, and two others. A grand jury had indicted them for wire fraud, including bilking $560,000 from a female victim resident of Albuquerque, New Mexico.

Ms Ogiozee, a self-proclaimed No1 car broker in Africa, was first indicted on December 2, 2020, but was not arrested until September 16, 2021. FBI’s findings indicated that the car dealer moved more than $3 million in suspicious transactions through her American bank accounts between August 2016 and September 2017.

“The charges stem from a romance scam that resulted in approximately $560,000 being stolen from the victim, a woman residing in Albuquerque, New Mexico,” the court document said. 

It added, “Although the indictment only focuses on the egregious conduct by the defendant and her four co-conspirators that affected the New Mexico victim, the investigation into this group of individuals has revealed that their involvement with fraud is much more extensive and that it is spread far and wide.” 

After her arrest and the seizure of five devices and three computers from her residence in St. Louis, Missouri, Ms Ogiozee made her first appearance in the Eastern District of Missouri on September 17, 2021. She was subsequently released on a $25,000 bond. She was also placed on home detention, with specific conditions pending her trial on February 6, 2023.

However, the auto dealer claimed the American authorities targeted her because of her identity as a black woman from Nigeria.

“It’s because I’m a Nigerian that’s why it makes even more sense for them to even come for me,” Ms Ogiozee said in an Instagram live tirade shortly after Peoples Gazette reported that she had been charged in the United States for her role in a romance scam and falsified tax claims. 

When contacted again by The Gazette, Ms Ogiozee insisted she was innocent of the $560,000 romance scam and that her trouble came from selling a car for $12,000 to a customer in 2016. She also claimed she had been cleared of the charges despite court documents showing that her trial is scheduled to begin in February 2023.

“Again, if you don’t know what happened, we sold a $12,000 car to someone that was dating some lady without our consent,” she told The Gazette in a message. “If this (the indictment) was true, why have I not been charged like the other who was said to have been caught after me?”

She further stressed: “I have sold over 2000 cars and only have issues with one customer.”

Ms Adesuwa in her Instagram broadcasts and posts falsely told her fans she was not charged or arrested, even though she was indicted by a grand jury, arrested by FBI agents and spent more than a week in jail before posting a bail for $25,000. Authorities also restricted her movement to three hours a day and continued to surveil her with electronic device monitoring systems. Her lawyers have been begging the court to allow her to step out for more hours every day in order to carry out her business.

The auto dealer also denied ties with Messrs Adeniyi and Ogunlaja, accusing The Gazette of “turning her into a lesbian” after being asked about how she was indicted for conspiring with other male criminals to steal $560,000 from the New Mexico woman.

“Like I was the one dating some lady. I don’t even know any lady as we speak,” Ms Ogiozee said, insisting “I’ve never had anything to do with her. She did not pay me anything.”