Cristine Petitfrere Gets 30 Months for Laundering Romance-Scam Funds

Cristine Petitfrere of Miramar was sentenced on January 7, 2025, to 30 months in federal prison for laundering more than $2.7 million from romance scams. She was 30. The Justice Department said she kept $203,815.59 and sent the rest to an overseas partner the indictment called Co-conspirator 1, a person in Ghana.

That is the bargain a U.S. bank account buys a foreign romance crew. The fake boyfriend never has to clear a Miami teller window. The account holder does, and she is the one a Southern District of Florida judge can actually sentence.

Thirty Months for Moving $2.7 Million

Petitfrere sentenced to 30 months in prison after pleading guilty on September 11, 2024, to conspiracy to commit money laundering. The plea papers say she laundered over $2.7 million in criminal proceeds. She had faced a 10-year maximum on that count. The FBI Miami Field Office investigated. Trial attorneys Matthew A. Robinson and Lauren M. Elfner of the Civil Division’s Consumer Protection Branch prosecuted.

She was arrested in May 2024 on conspiracy to commit money laundering, illegal money remitting, and engaging in transactions with criminal proceeds. Four months later she admitted the conspiracy count. Sentencing had been set for December 11, 2024, then landed on January 7, 2025. On top of the prison term, the court ordered her to forfeit $203,815.59, the proceeds she personally received.

THE SENTENCE IN FIGURES

The Justice Department described those personal proceeds as a fee for moving other people’s money. The victims thought they were helping a partner in trouble. The partner was a script.

A Virginia Victim Sent $158,232 in Five Days

Federal charging papers walk through one week in August 2022 as a clean sample of the pipeline. A scammer persuaded a Virginia victim in her 60s or early 70s to send $23,670 to a Petitfrere bank account. Five days later the same victim sent $134,562 to another of her accounts, $158,232 in all. Prosecutors said Petitfrere then transferred $121,050 on August 17 to the unnamed Ghana co-conspirator.

That single customer, in two deposits, put more cash on the wire than many Americans earn in two years. Most of it left the country inside a week. The indictment did not treat this as a one-off. It said as-yet unidentified fraudsters duped three older victims, in Arizona, Indiana, and Virginia, into sending money to her accounts, and in one case a cashier’s check to her Miramar company, GlamGoddessArtistry.

The papers also listed 13 extra counts for transacting in criminal proceeds on more than $2 million in other transfers to the co-conspirator’s Ghanaian bank account. Those counts are a separate charging stack from the over $2.7 million she admitted laundering. She pleaded to the conspiracy, not to a trial on every count.

Why the Ghana End Needed a U.S. Account

A romance crew sitting in Ghana cannot easily receive a domestic bank transfer from Arizona without a local node. U.S. banks, wires, and cashier’s checks still treat a Miramar personal or small-business account as ordinary traffic until the pattern gets loud. Petitfrere’s job, as the Justice Department framed it, was to take the inbound victim payments, peel off a fee, and push the balance overseas.

The U.S. Secret Service, in public guidance on mule recruitment, lists romance-scam money mule red flags that track this case almost line for line: a partner who cannot meet, lives abroad, needs an account because they supposedly cannot open one, and then wants wires, cash, or crypto moved in a hurry. Money laundering is a crime, the Service says, and so is being a mule.

We will continue to vigorously pursue those who help facilitate these criminal enterprises, whether they work on the frontlines of deception or behind the scenes.

Brian M. Boynton, Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General, U.S. Department of Justice

Boynton, who heads the Civil Division, also called romance scams a growing threat to Americans, particularly the elderly. Petitfrere was the behind-the-scenes end in this file. She did not have to play the boyfriend. She had to keep the accounts open.

Three Older Victims and a Miramar Beauty Shop

The indictment, as quoted in court coverage of the charging papers, said the fraudsters invented foreign travel to explain why they could not meet in person. They also spun up fake accountants, lawyers, or other associates. Using those personas, they told the target that the love interest needed money for a tax or a business bill, then directed the transfer to other people or accounts.

GlamGoddessArtistry gave one of those transfers a business wrapper. A cashier’s check to a Miramar beauty shop looks less like a lonely wire to West Africa than a payment for services. The shop did not have to be a global syndicate. It had to be a U.S. name a victim would type on a check.

HOW THE CHARGING PAPERS DESCRIBED THE PLAY

• The window: From December 2019 to August 2023, Petitfrere moved romance-scam money to a person in Ghana in exchange for a commission.
• The cover story: Fake travel, plus fake lawyers and accountants, to keep the victim from ever meeting the “partner.”
• The rails: Her bank accounts and, in one instance, a cashier’s check to GlamGoddessArtistry.
• The named targets: Three people in their 60s to early 70s, living in Arizona, Indiana, and Virginia.

Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General Boynton said at the plea that romance scams cause not only large losses but also deep emotional harm. The three victims in the indictment are the ones prosecutors put on paper. The over $2.7 million she admitted moving implies a wider book of traffic than those three files.

Romance Scams Cost Americans $1.14 Billion in 2023

When Petitfrere pleaded guilty, the Justice Department pointed to Federal Trade Commission data for 2023: Americans’ reported losses total $1.14 billion in romance scams. That figure is reported harm, not a census of every unreported case. The FTC’s Consumer Sentinel Data Book logged 64,003 romance-scam reports that year, with a median loss of $2,000, the highest median among imposter scams even though business and government imposters drew far more complaints.

By 2025, nearly 60% of people who reported losing money to a romance scam told the FTC it started on a social media platform. Scammers tailored the pitch to public profiles, then invented a crisis or steered the target onto a fake investment site. Petitfrere’s charged window ended in August 2023, before that 2025 snapshot, but the method in her file is the same long game: build the bond, invent the bill, name the account.

Her over $2.7 million is a fraction of the 2023 national total and still a serious book of work for one Miramar node. A 30-month term closes that node. It does not close dating apps, Ghana accounts, or the next person willing to rent out a U.S. routing number.

What 30 Months Does Not Reach

THE CASE CLOCK

1. December 2019: The charged conspiracy window opens, with romance-scam proceeds moving through Petitfrere’s accounts toward Ghana.
2. August 2022: The Virginia victim sends $23,670 and then $134,562; $121,050 goes to Co-conspirator 1 on August 17.
3. August 2023: The charged window closes.
4. May 2024: Petitfrere is arrested in the Southern District of Florida.
5. September 11, 2024: She pleads guilty to conspiracy to commit money laundering.
6. January 7, 2025: She is sentenced to 30 months and ordered to forfeit $203,815.59.

Co-conspirator 1 does not appear on that list as a defendant. The indictment used a placeholder. On September 3, 2026, the Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network published a separate analysis of digital-asset investment scams, a different product from the 2019-2023 romance wires in this case, and still described professional launderers cashing out through networks of money mules. FinCEN reviewed 33,904 Bank Secrecy Act reports filed from September 8, 2023, to December 31, 2025, totaling about $12.7 billion in suspected scam activity.

The Ghana romance pipeline and the later digital-asset compounds are not the same crew. They use the same American spare part: a domestic account that can take a victim’s money and throw it over the water. Petitfrere sold that part for $203,815.59 and collected 30 months. The person on the other end of the August 17, 2022, transfer was still a blank line when she was sentenced.

Frequently Asked Questions

What Is a Romance-Scam Money Mule?

The U.S. Secret Service defines money mules as people recruited, knowingly or not, to move illegally obtained money through bank accounts, wires, money orders, checks, or cryptocurrency, often after a fake entrepreneur or online romantic interest wins their trust. In Petitfrere’s case the Justice Department treated her as a knowing participant who took a fee, not as an unwitting girlfriend, and the FDIC Office of Inspector General warns that mules can be prosecuted and held financially accountable for victims’ losses.

How Do Romance Scammers Usually Collect the Money?

The FTC says scammers tell the target exactly how to pay, and they pick rails that are hard to reverse: a wire through a company such as Western Union or MoneyGram, gift-card PIN codes, a money-transfer app, or cryptocurrency. Petitfrere’s file shows a related domestic trick, victim deposits and a cashier’s check into U.S. accounts she controlled, which then funded the overseas transfer.

How Can Someone Report a Romance Scam in the United States?

The FTC asks people to file at ReportFraud.ftc.gov and to notify the dating app or social network where the contact began; if money already moved, it also says to call the bank, card issuer, wire company, or crypto platform at once and ask about a recall. The FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center at ic3.gov is the central federal intake for internet crime, and FinCEN tells cyber-fraud victims to contact their bank immediately as well as IC3 or the nearest Secret Service field office.

What Other Counts Did the Indictment Add Beyond the Plea?

Besides conspiracy to commit money laundering, the May 2024 charging set included illegal money remitting and engaging in transactions with criminal proceeds, plus 13 counts tied to more than $2 million in other transfers to the Ghanaian bank account, a stack she did not try at trial after the September 11, 2024, guilty plea on the conspiracy count.

Petitfrere is the defendant a Broward federal court could reach because the money touched her accounts. Co-conspirator 1 remains a label. The next mule only has to open a new one.