A Nigerian national living in Minnesota has been sentenced to nearly six years in prison — and ordered to pay nearly $1.7 million in restitution — for defrauding a widowed Colorado woman through an elaborate cryptocurrency romance scam, federal authorities announced Tuesday.

The 37-year-old man, Adetomiwa Seun Akindele, will be deported to Nigeria once he serves his sentence, according to the United States Attorney’s Office for the District of Colorado.

Akindele pleaded guilty to one count of wire fraud and one count of money laundering in a scam in which authorities said he posed as a wealthy Italian-American businessman named Frank Labato on a dating website in 2018. Akindele and the woman began exchanging emails and phone calls during which Akindele “provided the victim with additiona

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