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In August 2016, about a year after losing her husband to cancer, a Chesapeake woman decided to join a dating website dedicated to people over 50.
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Soon after, she made a connection with a man named Jerry Linus, listed in his OurTime profile as a resident of Virginia Beach. Linus reportedly was a widower, a native of Norway, and a jeweler who traveled the world for work.
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The two began communicating daily, through texts, phone calls and email. Linus sent the woman pictures from his travels and told her he loved her. The woman said she loved him, too.
Then, just weeks after their online romance began, Linus began asking for things.
First, it was a new computer. Next, $200,000 to purchase gold bars in Ghana, where he said he’d gone because prices were better. Later, it was nice clothes to travel to London. A few months after that, he needed another $100,000. All along, he assured her he’d repay her when he returned to Virginia to be with her.
Eager to help, the woman wired the money and mailed the computer, clothes, shoes and jewelry to the Ghana address Linus had provided. She had to cash out her IRA and took out a home equity line of credit to get it all to him. He, in turn, sent flowers to her home with a card expressing how much he loved her and looked forward to spending the holidays with her.
Then, in January 2017, about four months after their online connection began, the woman began to realize it was all a scam.
Soon after, a then 36-year-old man from Ghana contacted her through a videoconferencing call and revealed his true identity. His name was Richard Yaw Dorpe, not Jerry Linus. When the woman asked for proof, he left the camera for a while, then came back wearing the clothes, ring and smart watch she’d sent him. Court documents didn’t explain why he decided to reveal himself.
Dorpe, now 39, was sentenced Friday in U.S. District Court in Norfolk to three years and four months in prison. The term was near the top of federal sentencing guidelines, which recommended he serve between two years and nine months to four years and five months.
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The judge also ordered him to repay the more than $314,000 in cash and gifts he took from the Chesapeake woman, as well as about $12,000 to a woman from the United Kingdom he’d also swindled.
“It’s a horrible crime,” Judge Arenda Wright Allen said to Dorpe before issuing her sentence. “I mean, who does something like that?”
Dorpe was indicted in 2019, but wasn’t extradited to the United States from Ghana until earlier this year. He pleaded guilty in May to one count of wire fraud as part of an agreement with prosecutors.
The Chesapeake woman, who prosecutors said is about 70 and was identified in court only by her initials, was not present for the sentencing.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Elizabeth Yusi said the woman is too embarrassed to come to court and is terrified others will discover what happened. She especially fears her adult children finding out because she thinks they might try to institutionalize her.
The woman has been emotionally and financially devastated by Dorpe’s crimes, Yusi said. She’ll have to continue working well into what would have been her retirement years to try to make up for all the money she lost, the prosecutor said.
“You have put her in solitary confinement essentially and have estranged her from her family,” Allen told Dorpe. “She is going to be pained until she leaves this earth.”
Standing teary eyed before the judge, Dorpe apologized for causing the woman so much harm.
“I wish I could find the right way to express how sorry I am,” he told Allen. “I never knew the severity of my crime until I got incarcerated. I have learned a valuable lesson, a lesson I will never forget.”
Jane Harper, 757-222-5097, jane.harper@pilotonline.com