Man who said he was Bruno Mars scams woman out of $100,000, Texas cops say
A woman looking for love on the internet, according to Texas police, thought she found it — with Bruno Mars.
The romance blossomed, so much that she trusted the man with $100,000 of her own money, a criminal complaint alleges.
But the man the 63-year-old woman was communicating with wasn’t the “Uptown Funk” singer, but rather an alleged con artist catfishing her.
The alleged online romance scam resulted in the arrest of Chinwendu Azuonwu, 38, more than two years after he pocketed the money from the North Richland Hills woman, Houston police said.
The woman first reported the incident in October 2018 to her local police department, according to a complaint filed in Harris County District Court. She said she was searching for companionship on Instagram and began communicating with a man claiming to be pop singer Bruno Mars, according to the complaint.
They communicated through Instagram and Hangout, with the woman stating she fell in love with the man, police say.
Azuonwu, whom the woman was actually communicating with, told the victim he — as Mars — would quit his world tour to be with her, the complaint says.
“(The woman) stated that she now knows that she was never communicating with the real Bruno Mars, only an unknown individual,” cops say. “But at the time she was communicating with ‘Bruno Mars,’ she believed him to be the real Bruno Mars because he had sent her multiple texts and photos of Mars while he was on tour.”
In September 2018, the alleged impostor asked the woman to send “a friend of the band” $10,000 to help with tour expenses, court documents show. She fulfilled the request and did so again two days later when he asked for an additional $90,000, cops say.
By Oct. 17, Azuonwu had depleted all of the money form his bank account at various Chase Bank locations in Houston, according to the complaint.
Azuonwu and his alleged accomplice, Basil Chidiadi Amadi, were charged with money laundering, police say.
Azuonwu was taken into custody Monday and was released from jail on a $30,000 bond Tuesday, court records show.
“They will spend months talking to people online. Sometimes they will even borrow a little bit of money and return it to build up trust,” Keith Houston, a Harris County assistant district attorney with the Cyber Crimes Division, told KPRC. “They’re not stupid people, these scammers. They are very much sophisticated con artists.”
This story was originally published February 10, 2021 at 3:31 PM with the headline "Man who said he was Bruno Mars scams woman out of $100,000, Texas cops say."