How Nigerian socialite posed as Dubai Crown Prince, defrauded Romanian businesswoman of $2.5m

The fake Dubai Crown Prince also known as Henry

A Nigerian socialite, identified as Nzube Henry Ikeji, allegedly posed as the Crown Prince of Dubai to defraud a Romanian businesswoman of $2.5 million in a romance and humanitarian investment fraud scheme.

The allegation is contained in an investigation by the Organised Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP).

In a documentary published by OCCRP, the fraud started about three years ago when the Romanian businesswoman, identified as Laura, was contacted on LinkedIn by a user claiming to be the Dubai Crown Prince. The OCCRP investigation said the impersonator told the woman about his desire to invest in a humanitarian project in Romania through her. The report said that the two started conversing on social media, which led to a sort of romantic relationship. After some time, the impostor asked Laura to meet his financial manager in London to facilitate the creation of an account with a British bank. During one of their meetings, Laura asked one of her business partners to take a photograph of the man presented as the financial manager. She was later given login details to a bank account, where she saw a deposit of more than £200,000, but subsequently discovered that the account was cloned and the funds were not real. When Laura attempted to withdraw part of the money, she received an email demanding a large fee before the fund could be withdrawn. The Romanian businesswoman transferred more than $2.5 million to the account before she began panicking about how to recover her money.

The investigation revealed that Ikeji’s alleged accomplices later fell out over how to share the proceeds of the scheme. As a result of the dispute, two of the alleged partners reached out to Laura and disclosed the details of the fraud.

When Laura confronted the impostor posing as the Dubai Crown Prince with the claims made by his partners, he reportedly told her that they wanted to create enmity between them.