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Federal authorities announced Monday that Ghanaian social media personality Mona Faiz Montrage, also known as Hajia4Reall, has been extradited from the UK to the US for allegedly defrauding elderly, unmarried American men and women out of over $2 million in a deranged lonely hearts scam.
Mona Faiz Montrage, 30, from Accra, Ghana, appeared in federal court in Manhattan on Monday for her alleged participation in a number of romance scams that preyed on elderly individuals who were living alone, according to the prosecution.
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According to her attorney, who verified the news to The Post, she entered a not guilty plea to the charges and will be released in the upcoming days under a $500,000 bail that will allow for GPS monitoring through an ankle monitor.
Mona who had around 3.4 million Instagram followers of her page Hajia4Reall at one point — from at least 2013 through 2019 was involved with a group of con artists from West Africa who assumed fake identities to trick people into thinking they were in relationships with them using emails, texts and social media messages, the feds said.
The scammers would then get the victims to transfer money to them under false pretenses — such as to help move gold to the US from overseas, to resolve bogus FBI investigations and payments to help fake US Army officers in Afghanistan, court papers allege.
Montrage, in one case, allegedly duped a victim into sending her $89,000 through 82 wire transfers on the pretext of helping her father’s farm in Ghana, the court documents claim.
She tricked the person into believing the pair were married by sending them a tribal marriage certificate after a series of phone conversations using her real identity, the filing alleges.