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Korean firm scammed out of $375K for fake Pharrell show

April 24, 2015

Pharrell Williams (Photo by [Paul A.Hebert]/Invision/AP)

PITTSBURGH (AP) — A man scammed a South Korean steel company out of $375,000 by claiming he worked with a Japanese talent agency that could help the company book a concert by musician Pharrell Williams, FBI agents in Pennsylvania said.

Sigismond Segbefia, of Silver Spring, Maryland, faces multiple charges, including wire fraud, bank fraud and identity theft. He is also accused of stealing the identity of a western Pennsylvania postal worker and using it to bilk more than $445,000 from women he met on dating sites.

At least one woman lost $185,000 from December 2013 to August 2014 in the scam, the FBI said. Segbefia convinced her that he owned a medical equipment business and kept running into financial difficulties while trying to ship some of the devices to England, the FBI said.

Segbefia, a native of Ghana who is in the U.S. legally, was arrested Tuesday by federal customs officials at Kennedy Airport in New York. He was released on bond but ordered confined to his home until his appearance before a federal magistrate May 14 in Pittsburgh.

The 28-year-old Segbefia used a company he incorporated in Maryland in October 2013 called Eastern Stars LLC to make his various claims seem legitimate, the FBI said.

He used the company’s name when he told the woman about his medical supply woes, and he used it again, the FBI said, when he contacted Dosko Co. Ltd., a steelmaker in South Korea.

The company wanted to book Pharrell for a concert in Seoul and wired $375,000 to Eastern Stars, somehow believing it to be a company working with a Japanese booking agency, the FBI said.

The Japanese company was “provided with a contract and invoice in the name of Eastern Stars LLC,” which claimed to be Williams’ “legal representative,” the FBI said.

Segbefia further provided “fake documents, emails addresses, and the names of Williams’ real management team” before the steel company wired the money to Eastern Stars in August.

The next day, Segbefia withdrew more than $113,000 from an Eastern Stars bank account, but the bank froze the rest once Dosko got suspicious and tried to recall the $375,000 wire transfer, the complaint said.

The talent agency that represents Pharrell didn’t immediately comment on the case.