Emmanuel Weyi — Portrait of a Con Artist
Emmanuel Weyi is an international con man and criminal. He’s an American living in Uganda, using his mobile phone to scam people around the world and get money from them. He may be using a different name. As far as I know, he is still in Kampala calling people on his phone, trying to do “gold deals” with them to get their money.
Emmanuel Weyi’s email is emweyi@gmail.com
Emmanuel Weyi’s phone number is 720 334–5214
He often uses the last name “Wey”
He’s been scamming innocent people for a long time, working with his son Jonathan (“Wamba”) Weyi (jwamba@msn.com) in Denver, where their bank account is. The address where I had Jonathan served with papers is:
Jonathan Wamba
913 S. Zeno Way, #202, Aurora, CO 80017
Jonathan’s phone number is 303 520 4769
Emmanuel is currently in Kampala, Uganda. He threatens lawsuits to people he has scammed. He targets people locally and internationally, mostly Americans, mostly by phone.
He has no money. He continues to try to scam people to get them to send him money.
Emmanuel Weyi has no problem signing legally binding contracts that he knows he will never honor.
UPDATE: I have won my first law suit against his company, Group Wey, of Denver. He legally owes me more than $50,000.
UPDATE: He conned a man in Uganda into giving him $40,000 in summer 2023. He is still conning people there and in the US.
As a result of this page, I have now been contacted by several more victims. My goal is to get him arrested and charged with fraud in Uganda or the United States.
He scammed me in 2020. I lost money. I hired a Denver law firm, sued, and won a judgment against him in district court. There is no way to collect, of course, because Jonathan and the company have no money. The money generally goes to Emmanuel in Kampala.
Most people don’t try to sue him because they are embarrassed about losing money so stupidly. He threatens to sue people all the time, but he is broke. I know he’s broke, because I keep in touch with his former landlady, who was renting him a room for $500 a month until he owed her six months’ rent and she kicked him out.
I believe he is mentally ill. He is also very charming and very good at the long con.
Charming and ruthless — Emmanuel Weyi makes most Congolese presidents look like decent human beings.
Background
Emmanuel Weyi was born Ntima Weyi in the north of Congo on 29th of May, 1959. He was educated in Europe and moved to Dallas, then Denver, Colorado. He is or was married to Odette Weyi of Kisangani Congo, and he claims she is from the prominent family of Simon Kimbangu. She is likely also involved in his scams, though I have no direct evidence of that. His son, Jonathan Wamba, in Denver, received and disbursed the funds I wired.
How he scams people
He is very well spoken and traveled. He claims to know many famous people, like Elon Musk, George Bush, many senators, and other very powerful politicians. He runs a long con, where he gets people to trust him, believing that he’s a billionaire, promises them a huge business deal worth millions of dollars. Or he claims to have a lot of gold he wants to trade for cash. He goes back and forth on terms and documents for months, pretending to pay attention to all the details of “the deal.” After months of building himself up, he explains he’s getting a divorce or for some reason his cash is tied up. He needs them to advance him money, which he will pay back with a huge amount of interest. He just needs a cash advance on a “small amount,” like $20,000, or a bar of gold that he is planning to deliver personally.
During the months of negotiations, he meets many of his victim’s friends and business associates, and he diligently works to get to know them. After the con is over, he contacts these people next in line and says he wants to do a big deal with them. And the process repeats. He’s been doing this more than 20 years and has probably taken about $1 million from various people over that time. Including his own children.
I have spoken with many previous victims. I’ve spoken with the FBI. Because of my efforts, I’ve prevented about a dozen people from getting scammed.
If he has contacted you, you should understand that he has probably already contacted anyone you have introduced to him. He follows the chain of referrals until someone trusts him and sends him money.
I hear from someone about once a month saying he has tried to sell them gold or get them into a get-rich deal. Contact me if he tries to do this to you.
The public-relations scam
Twenty years ago, Weyi pretended he was going to run for president of the Democratic Republic of Congo, where he was born. He started a nonprofit foundation and asked people to donate money. He sent out press releases. Many journalists liked the story of a Denver man running for president of Congo, so there are many such stories online.
He is the father of three boys: Brentan, Jonathan, and Randy. He claims to have high-level connections to wealthy and powerful people throughout Africa and the United States. Jonathan has changed his last name to “Wamba” to avoid being associated with his family name, though Jonathan is also a criminal. From interviews with previous victims, I believe Brentan Weyi has also helped his father scam people.
He is very good at telling stories. He is the kind of person who makes good people in the Congo suspicious to outsiders. While most Congolese people are honest, hardworking people, Emmanuel Weyi works his way into society and lies about everything, promises big things, and has no problem inflicting pain on his victims. He is the very worst kind of profiteer, con man, and thief. He is a dangerous psychopath.He represents the dark side of humanity. His actions show how willing he is to hurt others — including his own family members — for his own gain.
In February, 2022, Emmanuel was evicted from the $500-per-month room he was renting from a woman in Kampala, Uganda, because he failed to pay his rent for six months.
My story
In 2021, Emmanuel Weyi posed as a very wealthy businessman with hundreds of millions of dollars in gold and cash. He was introduced to me by a licensed third-party investment broker named Michael Knight in Denver. Weyi clearly has some connection to mining in Congo and may have made some money that way, but he seems to have shifted to conning people decades ago. He took money from me using a signed contract for a loan that he never repaid. He promised me work, he promised to donate $1 million to my nonprofit (with $8 million more to come, he said), and he asked me to work on many business projects that turned out to be fake. His son, Jonathan, played along with his charade. I know he has taken money from others. He has even approached my friends asking them for money. He uses many different tactics.
In 2015, he asked people for money to support his candidacy to run for president of the Democratic Republic of Congo. He sent out press releases and got himself written up in the Denver Fox News and the LA Times. He may have simply used that money personally. I don’t know, but this is his style. He asks people for money to help him, promising much greater rewards, and then he just keeps the money. My guess is that he has not paid taxes on any of this income.
Emmanuel is the perfect con artist. He presents himself well, is knowledgeable about many aspects of business and politics, and he always promises big things. In the process of doing something really big, he asks for a loan because for some reason his cash is tied up, he just needs a short-term loan. Or he builds up your trust in a big deal, then he asks for a small deal where he gets money first. He delays and delays, always saying you have to be patient, he is going to do really big things with you.
He conducts two main scams I know of:
He wants to do a huge gold trade with your company, he talks about it for months, many metric tons, special air flights, insurance, guards, special relationship with the FBI, etc. Then after months of this, he says he’s bringing the first 10 kilos by himself to you for a test, so just pay for that ahead of time and he’ll bring it to you and deliver it personally. Once he has your money, he sends you excuses about why he is held up.
He wants to hire you to work with him on a project involving moving many metric tons of gold and other made-up assets. But — he’s going through a divorce, his funds are frozen, something has come up, he just needs $50k to make sure the shipment goes through and he’ll pay you right back with an extra $25k bonus. He is happy to sign a contract to this effect. He has been doing this to people for a long time.
He is willing to sign contracts and notes. He collaborates with his son, Jonathan, in Denver. He always has an excuse for why something isn’t working out as planned. He always delays and delays.
He also started the Colorado Sickle Cell Foundation, which has no web site. Its status has been categorized as “delinquent” for years, and there is no office at the listed address. He may also have used that to get money from people and spend it on himself, I don’t know.
I hope to find other people he has conned, so we can file complaints in several states and with the US government. Because of this web page, two people have contacted me. I now have heard from seven people whom he has either scammed or tried to scam.
I know the FBI and the Denver District Attorney’s office both have files on him. I and the others are happy to collaborate with the FBI, FTC, the Internet Crime Complaint Center, and other government agencies to give them a better picture of Weyi and his business dealings.
With his friend Rajiv Ruparelia in Uganda
In my opinion, he is mentally ill. He believes his own stories. He remembers things that didn’t happen to justify his lies.
Dan’s Story
I received this from a man who found this page:
My name is Dan Swesey. I live in Denver, Colorado. In 2016, I met Emmanuel Weyi when he was fundraising for his phony “campaign” to become president of the Congo. I believed him. I helped him find donors and gave him the money. This was all a scam from the beginning, and his two sons, Jonathan Weyi and Brentan Weyi, were both involved. I raised several thousands of dollars for his “campaign”. He eventually promoted to “ senior advisor”.
Around this time, his son Jonathan lost a newborn child. I attended the funeral. Jonathan and his wife had unsuccessfully tried to raise money for a casket on GoFundMe, so the body was buried in a makeshift box. No one was there but immediate family and my wife and I. This was another big red flag I didn’t see clearly enough, because he told me so many times how many friends he had and how important he was.
He told people I was broke. He had people write checks to me, then he asked me to cash them and give them the cash. My pride allowed me to look past the 500 red flags. I let it go on too long.
Emmanuel is full of ridiculous stories to make him look important. He attempts to emulate and repeat what he learns from movies and tv. He tried to con a successful business friend of mine into taking a trip to Georgia, where a certain chemical could be purchased ($80K) to wash US currency that had been dyed black to avoid declaration at US Customs. Of course, this was just another story to get someone to give him money. He is always “working” with “very important” and “high level” “government officials.” Everything he says is a lie. I think he actually believes many of them himself.
I’m glad David is helping people learn about him. The sooner he goes to jail, the better.
Companies he has been involved with
Groupe Weyi Export, Denver (defunct)
Group Wey Export, Denver (still active)
Wey Investment Limited in Uganda
Groupe Weyi International (probably defunct)
Contact me
I know of more than a dozen people he has conned or tried to con. Sometimes for a few thousand dollars, others for hundreds of thousands.
There will be much more information here over time. For now I am looking for others whom he has scammed.
Beware: Emmanuel Weyi and many others like him use any means necessary to con people. If you have any contact with him, he will try to get to your friends and associates. If you run into him, if I can help law enforcement charge and convict him, contact me.
I can be reached via the form below.