Thomas A. Varlan, an American judge in the Eastern District of Tennessee in Knoxville, has sentenced two Ghanaian nationals to jail for online fraud and money laundering.

The convicts are Wigbert Bandie, 34, from a community in Northwestern Ghana, and Adam Khadijah, 30, from Bole in Ghana's Savanna Region.

Wigbert was sentenced to 63 months in November 2024 for using connections to persuade people to pay them money by wire, check, US mail, and package delivery services.

Adam Khadijah, on the other hand, was sentenced to thirty months in prison.

Bandie admitted to one count of conspiracy to conduct wire fraud under 18 U.S.C. §§ 1349 and 1343 as part of a plea deal filed with the court.

Following his sentence, Bandie will be on supervised release for three years. Brandie was also forced to pay $2.18 million in reparations to the eleven victims in this case.

The two convicted defendants were charged with conspiracy to commit wire fraud, two counts of wire fraud, two counts of mail fraud, and money laundering. Another guy, Mubarak Braimah, is still on the run.

It is claimed that from June 22, 2019, to December 31, 2019, the defendants colluded to defraud victims through romantic scams, gaining money under false pretense.

Wiggy Bandie and Mubarak Braimah are accused of using social media to target victims by impersonating people looking for relationships in other countries. They persuaded victims to submit money for shipping expenses by offering earnings on non-existent gold shipments. Khadijah Adam and Wiggy received the monies from the victims.

In one example, Wiggy Bandie, also known as "Kimberly McIntosh," pretended to be an heir to gold bars in Singapore, tricking Richard Coleman, a Knoxville resident, into paying shipping costs.

Bandie fabricated fraudulent documents, including a memorandum of agreement for a 40% portion of the gold, which Coleman signed. Mubarak Braimah, posing as a liaison for a fictitious shipping company, assisted the scheme, robbing Coleman of $73,550.

JoyNews has found that Wiggy Bandie, who was arraigned on November 27, 2023, was offered a plea bargain involving payback and a six-year prison sentence, which he declined.