THEY gave themselves aliases to match the scale of their deception. Jamal Abubakari went by “Arrangement.” His twin brother Kamal was “Lancaster.” They were building something, alright – not the romantic lives they promised their victims, but a meticulously engineered criminal apparatus that turned loneliness into liquidity.
On Thursday, May 14, 2026, the United States Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Ohio unsealed a federal indictment charging the two brothers from Ghana and a 53-year-old American woman, Amanda Joy Opoku-Boachie, also known as Amanda Joy Glum and Amanda Joy Kessei Bierman, with Conspiracy to Commit Wire Fraud and Money Laundering. All three were arrested in Virginia and remain in custody.
The case is not isolated. It is the latest in a coordinated series of prosecutions tied to a transnational romance fraud network that has, according to federal records, already seen nine defendants plead guilty and receive collective sentences of approximately 50 years of imprisonment.
They targeted the elderly on dating websites and social media platforms, establishing close personal relationships with victims that were often romantic in nature.
The Anatomy of a Romance Fraud
The indictment is clinical in its description of the modus operandi, stripping away any romantic veneer to expose the machinery beneath. According to the allegations, the conspiracy ran from approximately July 2024 to April 2026 — twenty-one months of deliberate, sustained deception.
“The defendants targeted older Americans on dating websites and social media platforms to engage in romance fraud schemes. The defendants conspired with others to use fake personas to establish close personal relationships with the victims, which were often romantic in nature.”
The architecture of the scheme relied on three interlocking mechanisms: the creation of false identities convincing enough to sustain emotional bonds; the emotional manipulation of victims over sustained periods; and a cross-continental money movement infrastructure designed to insulate the principal conspirators from direct legal exposure.
Once victims had been drawn into what they believed were genuine romantic attachments — often over weeks or months of careful cultivation — the trap was sprung. The indictment states the victims were
“misled by false stories”
and then induced to send money via wire transfer to financial accounts controlled by conspiracy members. Portions of those funds were then
“further provided to co-conspirators in Ghana and elsewhere.”
— a phrase that acknowledges the full transnational breadth of the criminal enterprise.
The Trio at the Centre
Jamal Abubakari, 22, and Kamal Abubakari, 22, are brothers from Ghana. Their youth makes the calculated nature of their alleged conduct all the more striking. Amanda Joy Opoku-Boachie, 53, the sole American national charged in this indictment, provides the domestic infrastructure essential to any successful transnational fraud: local bank accounts, local movement of funds, and local plausibility.
That Opoku-Boachie carries multiple aliases — Glum, Bierman, Opoku-Boachie — suggests a life lived in deliberately constructed layers of identity, mirroring, perhaps by design, the fake-persona playbook used on victims.
The investigation was led by the FBI Cleveland Division, with significant assistance from the Justice Department’s Office of International Affairs. The international reach of the coordinating response is reflected in the list of partners the U.S. Attorney’s Office cited, which spans the entire spectrum of Ghanaian law enforcement:
The Ghana Attorney General’s Office, the Economic Organised Crime Office (EOCO), the Ghana Police Service (GPS), the Ghana Cyber Security Authority, the Narcotics Control Commission (NACOC), the Financial Intelligence Centre, the Ghana Immigration Service, and the National Intelligence Bureau.
The FBI Legal Attaché Office in Accra, the U.S. Department of State, and Homeland Security Investigations rounded out what is a genuinely whole-of-government, two-hemisphere law enforcement response.
A Pattern, Not an Incident
Federal prosecutors have been deliberately methodical in how they have organised these cases. Multiple related prosecutions have been assigned to a single U.S. District Judge to coordinate proceedings — a structural decision that signals the government’s awareness that it is not dealing with isolated incidents but with an organised, networked criminal enterprise.
The sentencing record in companion cases reveals both the scale of harm and the courts’ determination to hold perpetrators accountable. In United States v. Otuo Amponsah et al., the lead defendant, Otuo Amponsah, 34, of Columbus, Ohio, received 108 months — nine years — behind bars and was ordered to pay more than $3.3 million in restitution. His co-defendant Anna Amponsah, 35, also received 108 months and was ordered to pay over $1.4 million. Portia Joe, 28, was sentenced to 51 months and ordered to pay over $2 million.
Nine defendants have already pleaded guilty and been collectively sentenced to approximately 50 years of imprisonment — an average of more than five years per person.
In United States v. David Onyinye Abuanekwu et al., Nancy Adom, 30, received 71 months and was ordered to pay over $1 million in restitution. Eric Aidoo, 46, also received 71 months, with $668,228 in restitution ordered. Even an obstruction of justice conviction carried weight: Nader Wasif, 31, of Brentwood, Tennessee, received 12 months and was ordered to pay $172,644.
A further indictment in December 2025 charged Frederick Kumi and Daniel Yussif — both in their early thirties, from Swedru and Accra respectively — with the same wire fraud and money laundering conspiracy charges. And Kelvin Asmah, 28, a Ghanaian national, was recently arrested after being named in a second superseding indictment.
The Victims: Elderly, Isolated, Targeted
The victims are not nameless abstractions in the indictment. They are described with deliberate precision as “old Americans” — a population statistically more likely to live alone, more likely to seek connection online, more likely to be unfamiliar with the fraud patterns endemic to digital romance spaces, and more likely to have accumulated savings that make them attractive targets.
The prosecution arises from the Elder Justice Initiative Programme, which originates from the Elder Abuse Prevention and Prosecution Act of 2017 (EAPPA). The mission statement is unambiguous: to “support and coordinate the Department of Justice’s enforcement efforts to combat elder abuse, neglect, financial fraud, and scams that target the nation’s elderly population.”
Restitution figures across the companion cases — $3.3 million here, $2 million there — tell a story of devastation that goes beyond money. For many elderly victims of romance fraud, the financial loss is compounded by the destruction of something even more fragile: the belief that the love they had found was real.
Africa’s Reputational Exposure
The prominence of Ghanaian nationals across these prosecutions raises uncomfortable questions for a country that has worked hard to position itself as West Africa’s most stable democracy and a preferred destination for the African diaspora. Ghana is not unique in producing romance fraud perpetrators — Nigeria has grappled with the legacy of the “sakawa” and “419” phenomenon for decades — but the pattern documented in these federal indictments, with its explicit routing of funds back to co-conspirators in Ghana, implicates infrastructure within the country that extends beyond a few bad actors.
That the Ghanaian government has cooperated extensively with U.S. prosecutors — through EOCO, the Cyber Security Authority, and multiple other agencies — is notable and should be acknowledged. It signals institutional seriousness. But cooperation in prosecution is not the same as systematic prevention. The reputational cost to Ghana, and by association to the broader African digital economy, accumulates with each unsealed indictment.
For many elderly victims, the financial loss is compounded by the destruction of something even more fragile: the belief that the love they had found was real.
Presumed Innocent, Potentially Devastating
Federal prosecutors were careful to note, as they must, that “an indictment is merely an allegation” and that “all defendants are presumed innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt in a court of law.” The case against Jamal Abubakari, Kamal Abubakari, and Amanda Joy Opoku-Boachie is precisely that — an allegation at this stage. Their day in court lies ahead.
But the broader pattern documented across these coordinated prosecutions, with their guilty pleas, restitution orders, and prison sentences totalling half a century, leaves little room for doubt about the scale of the criminal enterprise these indictments are targeting. The FBI Cleveland Division and its partners across two governments have spent years building these cases. They are not guessing.
Assistant United States Attorneys Brian M. McDonough and Elliot Morrison are leading the prosecution for the Northern District of Ohio.
