Join us to hear the story of Kenneth Anim and his ex-wife Akua Dufie and how they swindled victims out of $5.3 million dollars using romance and elderly scams. This is eCrimeBytes.com S 2 Ep 9-1 – Romance And Elderly Scams With Kenneth Anim’s Samanti Group – Act 1: The Conspirators.
Sources:
- https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/63575928/united-states-v-anim/
- https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdtx/pr/dual-citizen-gets-max-laundering-romance-scam-proceeds
- https://coveringkaty.com/news/fort-bend/richmond-man-sentenced-to-five-years-for-romance-scam-target/
- https://shoutouthtx.com/meet-kenneth-anim-ceo/ (Photos)
- https://omgvoice.com/news/kenneth-anim-ghana-online-romance-scam/
- https://www.click2houston.com/news/local/2023/02/28/richmond-woman-accused-of-working-as-money-mule-in-yearslong-nationwide-romance-fraud-scheme-feds-say/
Transcript:
00:00:10:00 – 00:00:48:18
Keith
Hey, welcome to eCrimeBytes Season two Episode nine. This one is Romance and Elderly Scams with Kenneth Anim. Okay, now there’s a lot to take in there because a couple of different types of scams, but they’re also kind of related. Technologies not going to be real complex. In this case, we’re just going to talk about simple things like email, WhatsApp or pretty much any major communication platform you can imagine, like Facebook chat, Instagram, whatever it is you use to chat, scams will like this will be on there.
00:00:48:18 – 00:01:17:13
Keith
I can almost guarantee it. So the crime happened between 2014 and 2019. Now I said it’s romance and elderly scams, but actually they get them on money laundering and I think it’s more of a they kind of got them on a technicality based upon the actual scams. So you’re going to hear us talking about the scams, but then you going to hear us talking about also the money laundering at the end. Criminals here.
00:01:17:14 – 00:01:33:22
Keith
Now, I say a plural and I can tell you who the second one is yet. I’m just gonna tell you the first. It’s Kenneth Anim. He’s from Houston, Texas, and Ghana. So he has somebody else that helps him that you’re not going to probably guess right away that I’m going to leave a surprise closer to the end.
00:01:33:22 – 00:01:54:16
Keith
And so why don’t we pick this case? This is one of the first cases that is a listener request, not specifically this individual, but this topic area. I had a listener say that elderly scams were a really big thing and they needed a little bit of a highlight. And this flew past my radar and I was like, This is perfect timing.
00:01:54:16 – 00:01:57:11
Keith
So I put this case together in response to that.
00:01:57:11 – 00:02:21:24
Keith
This week we have four acts for you. That’s usually our average week is about four acts. Monday, the one you’re watching right now. We’re going to introduce you to the conspirators. Tuesday, which is act two. This one’s called Make Fat Stacks Wednesday, which is Act three. This is the arrests. And then Thursday, which is act four, it’s going to be punishment.
00:02:21:27 – 00:02:27:16
Keith
So with that, let’s go ahead and get right into the conspirators.
00:02:27:16 – 00:02:47:10
Keith
Now, the very first person that we’re going to meet, his name is Kenneth Anim, and he I’m going to say mostly lives in Ghana. And this is because I’ve read the court paperwork and he will say I’m mostly from the U.S. The government will say he’s from abroad.
00:02:47:12 – 00:03:02:25
Keith
And I think the judge and the court kind of falls in the middle where where I am, which is he mostly lives abroad. Now for short periods he lives in the U.S. and specifically as a Houston, Texas.
00:03:02:25 – 00:03:07:28
Keith
He has four children. Listen, that’s a lot of kids. I have three.
00:03:08:00 – 00:03:41:03
Keith
And I couldn’t see straight. I couldn’t imagine have four. But he has four with a woman named it’s either Akua or Akua Dufie from Houston, Texas. She is now now, like today, his ex-wife. So he also has another child that’s five. He has another child with a wife in Ghana now officially. And you know, with this research, I do a lot of online research, not only in the court documents, but looking for pictures and things like that.
00:03:41:05 – 00:04:07:10
Keith
Officially, he lists himself as a CEO of this group called this Samanti Group. And for audio listeners, I’ll just spell it for you. Is he can kind of visualize it it’s s a m a n t i group now got a picture of Kenneth here he is behind his big old CEO desk. And for you audio listeners, I’ll just kind of describe these next few slides for you because these are very visual.
00:04:07:12 – 00:04:45:22
Keith
He’s got his desk. He’s got like logos on the right and left side of his upper shoulder there. It says like some groups. Yeah, that’s a Samanti group of companies. And the other one says Samanti music. And at the bottom underneath his laptop says Kenneth Kofi Anim CEO Samanti group. And you know for being a CEO it’s kind of a very what’s the word um not assuming desk. It’s a very plain office desk with a flag and a calendar and a phone and two laptops.
00:04:45:22 – 00:05:05:21
Keith
And that’s about it. No pictures or. Yeah, I guess there’s a picture on the calendar, but nothing, nothing real remarkable about it. Now, on that same link that I got that that picture from, and I have the links and everything, that’s part of being a researcher. I try to put links in everything so you can go there and check it out for yourself.
00:05:05:23 – 00:05:28:28
Keith
So on that same link, there were a couple more pictures and this kind of describes what his group of companies do. And I say group of companies very loosely here because it’s only in the sense of what I’ve seen on his website and these pictures that I’m showing you are his companies. Okay. I think a lot of this is just kind of a front for the crime that we’re going to talk about.
00:05:29:01 – 00:05:56:13
Keith
So a couple of pictures I pull off. There is just this Samanti group of companies it says our industry is, and it just name some real wild ass industries here, like general merchandise, wholesale retail, oil and gas, music and entertainment, restaurant event service broker service, transportation and logistics, real estate and construction. Age K couture, media, travel and tourism.
00:05:56:13 – 00:06:30:18
Keith
So basically if you need to do anything. Kenneth He’s the guy. Kenneth is your guy and he’s got pictures everywhere of like just different things like houses and planes and oil rigs and all that stuff. And I look at this and I’m going, Oh my God, how does he do all this stuff? Because, you know, I imagine the the whole transportation logistics, he may be an Uber driver in his spare time, but how do you tie that with like a restaurant, an event service owner, and then you go music and entertainment, maybe with restaurant, you go, okay, it kind of matches, but then you go oil and gas, which is completely separate industry.
00:06:30:18 – 00:06:52:07
Keith
It just I don’t get it. And this is what he listed. So his first wife here’s a picture of her, for you video viewers. She’s the one that had four children and she doesn’t look happy. And I’m going to tell you, she probably doesn’t look happy because she had four children. I know my wife is frequently unhappy with our three children, so this woman is probably even more unhappy.
00:06:52:07 – 00:07:04:16
Seth
So let’s talk about the scamming duo. This duo worked together to pull off and launder money through romance and elderly scams. And I have to tell you, Keith, I think that’s especially scummy
00:07:04:16 – 00:07:15:16
Seth
What are elder scams? So there’s various scams that target old people, right? So this fake sweepstakes is romance scams for the widowed, etc. This is a whole enterprise that can go down the rabbit hole.
00:07:15:16 – 00:07:18:01
Seth
I’m sure people have had their own experiences with this,
00:07:18:01 – 00:07:36:24
Seth
keeping in mind I guess they’re playing or preying upon elderly people’s lack of sophistication and knowledge about technology and how easy it is to scam somebody with computers thus the cyber part of our show. What are the romance scams? So there’s an explanation from one of the agents on the case in the hearing.
00:07:36:26 – 00:07:57:10
Seth
So I guess it’s part of a, you know, a back and forth with the attorney. The question was asked of the expert, Can you explain what a romance scam is? And the response was, A romance scam is really somebody for the most part, that they’ve been able to meet somebody online, usually creates some type of person or a love interest relationship with this person.
00:07:57:10 – 00:08:21:12
Seth
Thinking that the person they’re speaking to is also actually interested in them. And then the person they’re communicating with gives a story of they’re usually overseas or they’re in the military or they some type of health condition or they have a lump sum of money that is held up in customs. And that’s usually the story that gets the victims to end up convincing the victims to help them out by sending funds to various accounts.
00:08:21:15 – 00:08:33:02
Seth
And usually these victims ended up being people that they’re communicating through different types of methods, especially with using different emails, WhatsApp or a telephone. And for the most part they usually never even meet this person.
00:08:33:02 – 00:08:51:17
Keith
And so I tried to research in this case what was Kenneth’s approach to his scams. And there was no paperwork that I could find that went to the level of saying, okay, he would call somebody and say, you know, this line and this would be the thing that would trick them into it. I didn’t have that picture for you.
00:08:51:17 – 00:09:25:01
Keith
So what I decided to do was pick out the most common romance scams out there because there’s a bunch of them. And one of the good places to research is this is the FTC government website. They have a whole like this article. It’s like a spotlight and romance scammers and some of their favorite lies exposed. And one of the charts in there basically ranks all the lines that they use against their victims by popularity or how often that they use it.
00:09:25:03 – 00:09:46:22
Keith
So I’m just going to read some of these and just tell you, you know, the percentage of the time that they use these that at least ended up in this FTC research. So the top one is I or someone else close to me is sick, hurt or in jail, and that one is 24%. So almost a quarter of the scammers will say that they’re either sick, hurt or in jail.
00:09:46:22 – 00:10:08:27
Keith
And I working in this industry, I can tell you that’s very common. I’ve seen this a lot. Usually there’s some kind of emotional feel bad for the person on the other side of this communication. So the second one is I can teach you how to invest, and this is 18%, which actually kind of surprised me. I didn’t really expect this one in there.
00:10:08:27 – 00:10:27:06
Keith
But they say it’s this number two and it’s actually tied with number three, which is I’m in the military far away and this is another 18%. Boy, I should have read further. There’s actually a third tie. Another 18% is I need help with an important delivery. So let me back up and say all three of these again for you.
00:10:27:12 – 00:10:30:20
Keith
All three of them are 18%. The first was
00:10:30:20 – 00:10:42:02
Keith
I can teach you how to invest. That’s the first line, 18%. I’m in the military far away, 18%. I need help with an important delivery. 18%
00:10:42:02 – 00:10:49:01
Keith
We’ve never met. But let’s talk about marriage. That’s 12%. And that. Yeah, I could see that. Especially
00:10:49:01 – 00:10:51:21
Keith
someone who might be elderly and very lonely.
00:10:51:21 – 00:11:16:25
Keith
Here’s another one. I’ve come into some money or gold. Now I’ll pause here. Most scams that I see that take people for a lot of money is when the other side pretends to put up a bunch of money. So if I were to go to Seth and go, Hey, man, listen, I got like a hundred million in the bank here, but it’s going to cost me $300,000 to get it out, Can you lend me that $300,000?
00:11:16:27 – 00:11:25:23
Keith
And if Seth gave me a 300,000, I just scammed him because there’s no way in hell I have that kind of money in the bank. And that’s kind of what they do on the other side.
00:11:25:23 – 00:11:26:15
Keith
They try to
00:11:26:15 – 00:11:38:05
Keith
get money out of you thinking that your you thinking that you’re going to get a bigger payoff, that they try to exploit that fact in the human the human psychology.
00:11:38:07 – 00:11:58:00
Seth
Well, and they do it over time, too. Right. So oftentimes it’s it’s a series of fees that has to be paid for. You know, in Jones’s example, it’s 300,000. Then it’s like another 80,000. It’s usually smaller denominations than this, you know, And ultimately it’s, you know, what, all these new banking laws are requiring all these fees be like, Oh, yeah, it’s a pain in the ass.
00:11:58:00 – 00:12:03:14
Seth
Here’s more money. So it’s I think it’s rarely just one shot. I think they can kind of try to milk people as much as they can.
00:12:03:14 – 00:12:18:01
Keith
Yeah. The next one down is 6%, which is I’m on an oil rig or ship and I would almost put that up with the military one that kind of usually it’s like I’m remote and you can’t talk to me or see me for some
00:12:18:01 – 00:12:19:00
Keith
technical
00:12:19:00 – 00:12:25:27
Keith
reason, like I don’t have bandwidth or I’m in a foreign country or I don’t have a phone or I don’t have a camera, my camera is broken.
00:12:25:27 – 00:12:46:14
Keith
There’s always something. And the last one they have on this list is you could trust me with your private pictures. And I will tell you, you can’t trust anybody with your private pictures. Shoot. I mean, they’re not private, but, like, I can’t even send my family pictures because, like, I’ve seen my daughters Photoshop my son next to Kim Jong Un in pictures before as a joke.
00:12:46:14 – 00:13:08:12
Keith
And it’s like I can’t even I can’t send my picture to the family chat because I’m afraid of getting Photoshop somewhere. So if you can’t do that, please don’t trust somebody on the Internet. Now in these scams, they want to get money from you. So another thing the FTC did was try to categorize the different payment mechanisms that people will use and then rank them.
00:13:08:16 – 00:13:08:28
Keith
So
00:13:08:28 – 00:13:27:21
Keith
they do it two ways. They either do it by total reported loss or number of reports, and I’m just going to do it by total reported loss because that’s kind of to me, I think the bigger picture. Now, the top one at 34% is cryptocurrency. So if someone’s asking you to give them money over using cryptocurrency, that’s usually a red flag.
00:13:27:21 – 00:13:48:17
Keith
And you can see over a third of the time, that’s usually what scammers will use. The next one down is bank wire transfer payment at 27%. And I got to say, I can’t think of a time I’ve ever wire transferred anybody in my personal life for anything. You know, I’ve been involved in corporate ones, but not personal. So if it’s just
00:13:48:17 – 00:13:49:18
Keith
a very odd
00:13:49:18 – 00:13:53:14
Keith
request like that, you got to think that’s a red flag.
00:13:53:16 – 00:14:09:09
Keith
7% is gift card. There’s actually a pretty big jump. It goes from 34% to 27% to 7%. So we’re now 7% is a gift card. And, you know, like we talked about in a couple episodes, gift cards, it’s just it’s money. It’s like reward points in our last episode.
00:14:09:09 – 00:14:14:23
Keith
The 3% is payment app or service. So I would imagine this is like
00:14:14:23 – 00:14:24:26
Keith
I may be getting them totally wrong, but like a PayPal or what’s the other ones like Zelle, Venmo, those type of things.
00:14:24:29 – 00:14:37:14
Keith
And I’m not sure. I don’t spend a lot of time on those apps. I’m not sure how much you can fake who you are on the other side. Some of them may be easier than others and then 28% is just other. So other ways of getting the money.
00:14:37:14 – 00:14:39:26
Keith
So now the FTC, I want to give you their warnings.
00:14:39:28 – 00:15:01:10
Keith
They say, how can you spot a romance scammer So if you don’t take anything, well, you know, like our jokes or anything, just remember these four things that the FTC says. Number one, nobody legit will ever ask you to help or insist that you invest by sending cryptocurrency, giving numbers on a gift card or wiring money. Anyone who does is a scammer.
00:15:01:12 – 00:15:21:15
Keith
I agree with that second one. If someone tells you to send money to receive a package, you can bet it’s a scam. And I would say I would worry even more than a scam that you’re probably handling something that’s highly illegal too. The third one is talk to friends or family about new love interest and pay attention if they’re concerned,
00:15:21:15 – 00:15:28:17
Keith
especially older generations listen to younger generations if they’re like, I really have a bad feeling about this
00:15:28:17 – 00:15:30:16
Keith
individual that you’re seeing.
00:15:30:24 – 00:15:31:29
Keith
You know, think about it deeply.
00:15:31:29 – 00:15:37:11
Keith
And here’s another one. This is a little more technical and this kind of it depends on your technical
00:15:37:11 – 00:15:47:13
Keith
comfort level. But what they say is try a reverse image search of the profile pictures. If the details don’t match up, it’s a scam. You know, Google has this a bunch of services have this.
00:15:47:13 – 00:16:05:16
Keith
But I think Google probably has one of the best ones where you can take images and basically just drop them in there and it says, hey, these are all the different spots that I see it on the net. And at least at one point I can remember even saying, here’s some pictures that are kind of like it to you so you can use those services to see if anybody else uses that picture.
00:16:05:16 – 00:16:12:12
Keith
Because if there’s, you know, Bob using it and then Ray using it and Larry using it, that’s a bad thing.
00:16:12:12 – 00:16:24:11
Keith
So with that for the video viewers, I’m going to put a how does the scam work picture and your screen and I’m going to try to describe this for our audio listeners. This is the romance slash elderly scam.
00:16:24:11 – 00:16:27:12
Keith
And this is Kenneth and his wife on the right hand side.
00:16:27:12 – 00:16:33:29
Keith
So all the money is flowing to the right hand side. It’s going over to Kenneth and his, I guess, ex-wife. Now,
00:16:33:29 – 00:16:44:01
Keith
there’s victims on the left hand side. Okay. So you have multiple victims. You have multiple old people out there being scammed. They each person gives a little amount of money.
00:16:44:01 – 00:17:04:26
Keith
So all these little like the arrow I’m showing you is a little smaller on the left hand side. So each person is giving out maybe $100,000. Right. And then you have all these victims sending it to all these different accounts. So I have accounts sort of matching the victims just a little further to the right there. So they’re sending it into these separate accounts.
00:17:04:26 – 00:17:28:12
Keith
So, Larry, who might be a victim is sending it to account A and Sally might be a victim, and she’s sending it to account B and Chester is sending it to account C and so forth. So it’s hard to tell that it’s all a scam, right, Because there’s so many accounts involved. Those accounts are created by shell companies.
00:17:28:12 – 00:17:52:28
Keith
So you have these companies that look like they’re real on paper, but they’re not. They just basically open a bank account and say they do a bunch of stuff like maybe that picture we saw of Kenneth earlier saying he does all this stuff that doesn’t relate to anything, you know, oil and gas relating to music and promotion. Maybe that’s why he has so many industries listed there, because he needs it for this type of activity.
00:17:53:00 – 00:18:14:15
Keith
I’m just speculating. I don’t know. So with that, I hope you enjoyed Act One. Please come back for Act two, because we’re going to get right into that making fat stacks. If there’s anything in this act that you like, please, like and subscribe whatever application that you’re on. If you’re on Apple Podcasts, please give us a five star and tell us what your favorite episode so far is.
00:18:14:15 – 00:18:32:00
Keith
So that way, I know what types of episodes to pick in the future and if you haven’t been to our website, it’s just e crime bytes dot com and I’m I can spell for you because I have to say this so many times that I think you’re going to know it by now. If not, watch our videos. It’s listed right across the top there.
00:18:32:02 – 00:18:35:18
Keith
It’s spelled bytes the computer way or y is it yellow milk. I’ll tell you that much.
00:18:35:18 – 00:18:43:23
Keith
And with that, please do come back and we will get right into the crime next.
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