( CNN ) -- A college student in Nigeria has been sentenced to 19 years in prison for scamming an Australian woman out of $ 47,000 online by pretending to be a widowed white businessman desperately in love with her . A court in Ikeja in southwest Nigeria ruled that Lawal Adekunie Nurudeen will also have to pay back the 56-year-old woman , even if it meant selling the two plots of land and the Honda Prelude he bought with her money . Nurudeen was an engineering student when he met the woman online in 2007 , said the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission , Nigeria 's anti-corruption police . The woman lamented that she was looking for a husband but had been disappointed in the men she had met . `` The convict , who is married with three children , instantly applied and told the victim that she had met Mr . Right , '' the commission said in a statement . Nurudeen pretended to be a 57-year-old British engineer working with a multinational company in Nigeria . He told her his wife and only child had died in a road accident in Lagos , the former capital of the country . `` He sent the picture of a white man to the victim to foreclose any suspicions , '' police said . The woman agreed to marry him . A few weeks later , Nurudeen called the woman pretending to be a doctor . He told her that her fiance had been in an accident and needed money for treatment . The woman obliged , the commission said . Nurudeen let two weeks pass . He then called the woman again , thanking her profusely for her kindness and telling her that he would like to visit her in Australia . He asked her for airfare , cash for customs clearance and other incidentals , police said . Authorities did not say how Nurudeen was caught . But he duped the woman of $ 47,000 before his arrest , the commission said . Scammers in Nigeria have gained a reputation for using the Internet to con foreign nationals out of money . Some of the scams have earned the name `` 419 '' after the clause in the Nigerian criminal code that deals with obtaining property under false pretense .
Police : Nurudeen was engineering student when he met the woman online in 2007 . Nurudeen pretended to be a British engineer working in Nigeria . Authorities do not say how he was caught .