Woman Sentenced After Helping Scam Artist

public service announcement for the FBI warning others against becoming the victim of a scam and then aiding the scam artist.

by Jaime Mowers

An 81-year-old Kirkwood woman was recently sentenced in federal court after pleading guilty to charges of helping a Nigerian scam artist with whom she had fallen in love.

Glenda Seim pleaded guilty in federal court on Nov. 2, 2021, to two felony counts of identity theft related to her participation as a “money mule” in various fraudulent transactions totaling up to $1.5 million on behalf of her online romantic interest, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office of the Eastern District of Missouri. A “money mule” is a person who receives fraudulently obtained money and merchandise on behalf of a scammer, and then forwards the proceeds to the scammer.

Although sentencing guidelines for the felonies recommended four years in prison, Seim was sentenced on Feb. 24, 2022, to five years of supervised probation, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office. She was also ordered to repay her victims.

The judge showed leniency in part because of the remorse Seim has shown, along with her willingness to film a

In the nearly two-minute public service video, Seim describes how she fell in love with a man she had never met, and then ignored friends, family members, law enforcement officers and even FBI agents who told her to stop sending the man money and being party to his fraud.

Seim details in the video how she met the man she called her love online in 2014. He claimed to be a U.S. citizen with business interests in Nigeria. Throughout the years, he would ask for Seim’s help in paying fees, taxes and penalties to the Nigerian government or his business associates, claiming he couldn’t leave Nigeria until those fees were paid.

Despite having never met him and communicating through text only, Seim started sending him money from her retirement benefits and pension. He then asked her to pawn electronic equipment he had others send her in the mail and then forward the money to him.

“When I couldn’t get the money he wanted, he asked me to open personal and business bank accounts,” Seim relayed in the public service announcement.

The U.S. Attorney’s office said Seim, who now lives in Webster Groves, then began receiving wire transfers from people she didn’t know, depositing counterfeit and fraudulently obtained checks into financial accounts she opened, allowing her love interest to fraudulently transfer funds from various businesses into her accounts and accepting unemployment insurance payments on behalf of people she didn’t know. A check drawn on the retirement account of a romance scam victim for $100,000 was among Seim’s fraudulent deposits, and she kept a portion of it before providing the balance to her online romantic interest.

Despite multiple warnings by wire transfer agencies, bank representatives, police officers and FBI agents — along with the forced closing of her financial accounts — Seim continued to transfer funds on behalf of her love interest. Between June 2014 and February 2021, she attempted to conduct fraudulent transactions between $550,000 and $1.5 million, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office.

“Since 2015, bank employees, local police officers and federal agents told me that my love was a scam, and that I needed to stop or I could go to jail,” Seim said, narrating the video. “I didn’t listen to anyone else but my love — the love I had never seen nor spoken to. Now I don’t have a choice of whom I’ll listen to — I’ll be listening to the judge.”