Mona Faiz Montrage, sentenced to 12 months and one day in U.S. prison, is set to see freedom again in 2025 after falling from a corrupt grace to a crooked grass following extradition from Ghana to the United States of America.
In addition to the prison term, Montrage, of Accra, Ghana, was sentenced to three years of supervised release and ordered to forfeit $216,475 and pay restitution of $1,387,458.
U.S. District Judge J. Paul Oetken sentenced Montrage on June 28, 2024.
Montrage previously pled guilty on February 21, 2024, to conspiracy to receive stolen money.
U.S. Attorney Damian Williams said, “Mona Faiz Montrage knowingly received illegal funds from older Americans who were victims of romance scams and now faces serious consequences for her actions.
“Romance scams such as Montrage’s harm vulnerable, elderly victims not only in the cruel betrayal of trust in the realization that their online romantic connection was fiction but by also callously stealing their money.”
Williams added, “This Office and our law enforcement partners are relentless in bringing fraudsters who target Americans to justice, no matter where they are.”
As alleged in the indictment and statements made in public filings and public court proceedings, from at least in or about 2013 through in or about 2019, Montrage was a member of a criminal enterprise based in West Africa that committed a series of frauds against individuals and businesses in the U.S., including romance scams.
Many of the criminal enterprise’s romance scam victims were vulnerable, older men and women who lived alone.
The criminal enterprise frequently conducted romance scams by sending the victims emails, text messages, and social media messages that deceived the victims into believing that they were in romantic relationships with a person who was, in fact, a fake identity assumed by members of the Enterprise.
Once members of the criminal enterprise had successfully convinced victims that they were in a romantic relationship and had gained their trust, they convinced the victims, under false pretences, to transfer money to bank accounts the victims believed were controlled by their romantic interests when, in fact, the bank accounts were controlled by members of the Enterprise.
Montrage is a Ghanaian public figure who rose to fame as an influencer through her Instagram profile under the username ‘Hajia4Reall’, which at one point had approximately 3.4 million Instagram followers and was among the top 10 most followed profiles in Ghana.
Montrage received money from approximately 40 victims of romance frauds, whom members of the criminal enterprise tricked into sending money.
Among the false pretences used to induce victims to send money to Montrage were payments to transport gold to the U.S. from overseas, payments to resolve a fake Federal Bureau of Investigation’s investigation, and payments to assist a fake U.S. Army officer in receiving funds from Afghanistan.
In total, Montrage controlled bank accounts that received over $2 million in fraudulent funds for the criminal enterprise.
