Mona Faiz Montrage, a well-known Ghanaian social media influencer and musician known as Hajia4real, has been charged and deported from the United Kingdom to the United States.
The artist has been charged with participating in a series of romance schemes as well as laundering the earnings from those schemes.
Montrage was apprehended in the United Kingdom on November 10, 2022, and extradited from the country on May 12, 2023.
Hajia4real will appear before U.S. District Judge Paul A. Crotty, who has been assigned the case, later today.
She faces one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud, one count of wire fraud, one count of money laundering conspiracy, and one offence of money laundering, each having a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison.
Montrage is also charged with one crime of receiving stolen money, punishable by up to ten years in jail, and one count of conspiracy to accept stolen money, punishable by up to five years in prison.
Damian Williams, United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, and Michael J. Driscoll, Assistant Director in Charge of the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s (FBI) New York Field Office, announced the unsealing of a six-count indictment charging Mona Faiz Montrage with participating in a series of romance schemes and laundering the proceeds of those schemes.
In the case of one victim, Montrage used her real name and called her multiple times.
Montrage provided the victim with a tribal marriage certificate claiming she and the victim were married in Ghana.
Montrage received roughly 82 wire payments totalling approximately $89,000 to ostensibly assist with costs linked with her father’s farm in Ghana.
Montrage had control over bank accounts that received more than S2 million in stolen funds from the Enterprise.
