Just a month after the release of popular British documentary ‘Tinder Swindler’ Amon Namara, a Ugandan living in South Africa was last week arrested for allegedly conning at least three women using the similar style of romance fraud as Simion Leviev from the famous Netflix documentary.
He allegedly made off with jewellery, clothes, and thousands of rands swindling wealthy women.
According to a South African website, Namara matched with his unsuspecting victims on the popular dating app Tinder.
“Posing as a millionaire who owned a Bentley and several properties in Johannesburg, Namara would take his partners on whirlwind dates before siphoning off large sums of money from them,” the website further states.
Namara is facing charges of fraud, money laundering and theft. He was arrested in Sandton and remanded in custody.
His bail application is expected to be heard in the Johannesburg Magistrate’s Court on Wednesday March 9.
How he allegedly swindled the ladies?
One of the victims, a mother of two says that after coming out of a stressful relationship a friend signed her up for Tinder where the app matched her with Namara.
“In August 2020, he told me that he was having some problems and he asked for R15 000 (Ugx3.5m). He said he would repay it by the weekend. In total, she was conned out of R52 000 (Ugx12m) but he also made off with stock worth more than R60 000 (Ugx13.9m) from her boutique. One of the items was a Rolex watch worth R10 000 (Ugx2.3),” states one of the victims.
The website also reported how Namara had promised another woman a trip to Knysna, but said he needed money to make the booking.
The lady allegedly forked out R16 000 (Ugx3.7m), but to her surprise, Namara left her stranded at the airport.
“After sharing her frustrations on social media, other women came forward with similar experiences,” stated the lady.
She further stated, “I found information about him and he said I should go ahead and open a (criminal) case against him if I wanted to. He said he didn’t care and would buy the docket (from the police),” said the unnamed woman”.
A female executive at Johannesburg is also said to have lost over R250,000 (Ugx58m) to Namara.
” The money was spent on maintaining Namara’s children, groceries, utility bills, furniture and two vacations which he suggested but never paid,” a South African Newspaper reported.