A 42-year-old Nigerian national, Franklin Ikechukwu Nwadialo, has been sentenced to five years in prison in the United States for his scheme to steal some $3.5 million from eight different victims via an online romance scam.
Nwadialo, the chairman of Ogbaru Local Government Area of Anambra State was arrested by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) at a Texas airport upon his arrival in the U.S in 2024.
The politician was elected chairperson on 28 September, 2024.
First Assistant U.S. Attorney Charles Neil Floyd announced this in a statement issued by the United States Department of Justice on Tuesday, June 23, 2026.
Nwadialo was sentenced on Monday in U.S. District Court in Tacoma, Washington.
He was indicted in December 2023 for 14 counts of wire fraud connected to his romance fraud scheme.
At the sentencing hearing, U.S. District Judge Tiffany M. Cartwright called the crime “devastating,” noting that it is “not an exaggeration to say it ruined lives—not only financial lives” but also from the nonmonetary harms the victims endured, such as “shame, depression, and isolation from their own family.”
“This defendant preyed on those already suffering from the loss of loved ones or other heartbreak. For some 15 years he upended the lives of people he never met,” said First Assistant U.S. Attorney Neil Floyd.
“He spun tale after tale to gain the victims’ trust and their money – even claiming to run a non-profit providing services for autistic children. No scheme was too low for these conspirators.”
“For years, Mr. Nwadialo preyed on vulnerable victims looking for relationships online, gained their trust, and told them lies to steal their life savings totaling millions of dollars,” said W. Mike Harrington, Special Agent in Charge of the FBI Seattle field office.
“Fortunately, although he operated his romance scams from overseas, Mr. Nwadialo ultimately traveled to the United States where he could be arrested and held accountable for his crimes here in the Western District of Washington.”