Nigerian conman was given a 3 years jail sentence for duping 81yr old pensioner in the UK

40 year old Nigerian man Chris Chidi Dinneya has been jailed for three and a half years for duping an 81 year old pensioner from Cambridge of £300,000 out of his life savings.

An elderly man from Cambridge lost about £300,000 in a scam after being told he had won the ‘Spanish lottery’, a court heard.
The 81-year-old paid huge amounts of money into overseas accounts in an attempt to release his ‘winnings’ from the imaginary competition and was so taken in by the fraud that he continued to try to send more cash to the conmen even after the police investigation began.
Officers had to team up with Cambridgeshire County Council to apply for a court order to take control of the victim’s accounts, to prevent any further losses.


Now one of the tricksters behind the deceit, Chris Chidi Dinneya, has been jailed for three-and-a-half years.
The 40-year-old, of Brocklehurst Street, London, was traced to a number of the payments which the victim made and he was arrested in November 2012.
Dinneya denied acquiring more than £6,100 from the Cambridge victim and a second charge involving a total of £179,725 from a number of victims across the world.
But he was convicted on both counts of money laundering following a trial at Cambridge Crown Court.
Many of the victims lost their life savings, police said.
Det Con Sharon Garrett, from Cambridgeshire police’s economic crime unit, said: “This is a very sad case involving many people who have effectively been scammed out of their life savings.
“The Cambridge victim was so convinced that he was set to receive a large payout if he kept sending the money transfers, that we had to take action to protect him.
“This should serve as a warning to others who are contacted by people claiming they have won prizes in return for money transfers or bank details. Remember, if something sounds too good to be true, it often is.”