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Using mail scams, Nigerian conmen perfect the art of the swindle. Do not get lured away by emails that invite investments and transfer of accounts.
Helga Krautner (not her real name) couldn’t believe her good fortune. The widow and owner of a successful manufacturing firm in Bavaria received a letter last year from a man who identified himself as Waziri Asissi. Krautner’s husband, the letter said had bought stock in a dam in Nigeria’s Kaduna State before his death, and the investment paid off richly. Her share: $23.6 million. She telephoned Asissi in Nigeria, and he confirmed the details. All she had to do was fly to Lagos and examine the papers. “If my husband was entitled to the money” she recalls, “I wanted to have it”.
In Lagos, Krautner was received in a luxurious office by Fred C.Ajudua, introduced as Asissi’s lawyers “Why are you coming so late?” he asked disarmingly. “The money had lain ready for you since last year!” He escorted Krautner by limousine to the Central Bank of Nigeria, where she filled out a transfer order. There was just one problem. Notary fees of $235,000 were due, upfront. It seemed like a sizable amount, Krautner recalls, but not when compared with the lifetime of comfort it would bring her and her family. She had $140,000 transferred from her account at a New York bank and obtained business loans for the balance. Later, in her presence, Ajudua made a call to the Central Bank and informed her that $23.6 million would be transferred to her account immediately.
By the time Krautner returned to Germany, however, the money had not appeared. Over the next few months, she made several trips to Lagos and gave Ajudua an additional $133,000 for unforeseen “charges.” She has yet to recover a penny.
Krautner is one of a growing number of victims of a Nigerian scam known locally as “419”, for the pertinent item in the Nigerian penal code. The schemes first appeared in the late 1980s, but since the start of the year have spread dramatically, enticing victims from Texas to Tokyo with an ever more creative array of ficticious windfalls. They are the most visible evidence of a vast web of deceit emanating from Africa’s most populous country. Efforts to prosecute for “419” offences have foundered on the limitations of international law and the inability or unwillingness of Nigerian authorities to crack down. For the confidence men, the rewards are substantial. Investigators, say hundreds of millions of dollars are lost every year. “No one knows the true extent of the frauds,” Shiao Lin Kuo, assistant director of the International Chamber of Commerce’s London-based crime bureau, said recently. “But then nobody is prepared to talk about the problem openly”.
Fraud investigators in Europe, the U.S. and Japan says the individuals, businesses and govern-ment agencies around the world have succumbed to a variety of Nigerian scams. Among them: credit-card fraud, check forgeries and schemes in which multiple identities are used to secure welfare benefits or academic scholarships. But the most widespread and lucrative ploy appears to be the letter scam. For the perpetrators, it has the advantage of taking place on Nigerian turf, beyond the reach of foreign law enforcement agencies.
Each month, thousands of letters and faxes, some of them on forged government or state corporation letter heads, are sent to potential victims. The addresses are culled from phone books and directories of businesses seeking contracts in Nigeria. Most of the missives are transparently false, their clumsy English and outrageous claims provided grist or office humour. But some are sophisticated, carefully researched and, investigators say, nearly impossible to detect. Typically, these also hint at improprieties behind the promised windfall, to discourage recipients from consulting authorities. If the bait is taken, victims are invited to Lagos, where they face a range of ruses and pressure tactics.
On several occasions, foreigners who resisted have been beaten, kidnapped or raped. Or worse, last year, an American physician named John White realised that he had lost thousands of dollars attempting to secure a pharmaceutical contract from agents claiming to represent the government. At the urging of a Nigerian fraud investigator, he returned to Lagos to identify the culprits and reclaim his money. Two days before his scheduled departure, White was found dead in his hotel room.
Some of the targets are not without experience in the ways of commerce. Laurence Martin, a British businessman who has been doing deals in Nigeria since 1978, was taken for $80,000 in 1991 after his company sought a contract from somebody claiming to represent the Nigerian Defence Ministry. South Africa’s Foreign Minister, Pik Botha once lost $500,000 of his government’s money to a local Nigerian politician after attempting to set up a magazine, sympathetic to the former apartheid regime. Many know they are doing something shady, but let greed or ambition cloud their judgement. One unnamed American admits he recognised his particular Nigerian offer as a money-laundering scam, but was nonetheless seduced by a promised share of $9 million. His loss:$15,000.
Potential prey are usually invited to Nigeria, where they are greeted by armed escorts and treated like VIPs. Immigration officials may be paid to allow passage without a visa stamp. Still unaware of their fate, they are taken to rented offices where they are asked for “Minor” payments to cover local taxes, cash transfers, notary and legal fees. As months or even years pass, fees are sought while excuses pile up about additional charges and continued delays.
Investigators say the more successful schemes may be organised by international-crime networks, in which “cells” of upto 20 people operate without knowing the identities of other participants. The cells are run by high rollers who meet periodically in foreign cities like Paris and London to share out the spoils. Money of the operators are prominent figures in Nigeria. Krautner’s contact, Ajudua, who was questioned in the case, but not charged, is a lawyer and socialite, well known in the West African city. The man who allegedly stung Pik Botha, Francis Nzeribe, is an IBO chief and was an opposition presidential candidate in last year’s elections.
A variety of organisations, from Interpol to the US Federal Bureau of Investigation, are tracking the schemes. But most authorities say they are powerless because the letters are sent from abroad. “Our lawyers tell us that it is not a crime to write letters,” said Josef Schon, a spokesman for Germany’s Federal Criminal Police. The efforts are illegal in Nigeria and carry a penalty of atleast three years in prison. But despite recent claims from Lagos authorities that they are cracking down, there have been no major convictions, and none of the millions lost has been recovered. Indeed, some Nigerian officials complain that the country is unfairly blamed for schemes often carried out with the complicity of foreigners. Eze-Ama Nwawa, a former member of the now disbanded House of Representatives, even declared that the conmen “ought to be encouraged”. As he told the Democrat, an independent national daily: “They are defrauding foreigners who have been in the habit of colluding with highly placed public servants in wrecking the economy”.
For legitimate Nigerian businessmen, the country’s fraud industry is a profound embarrassment. The Central Bank went so far as to take out a large ad in the Wall Street Journal a few years ago, disavowing any connection with “a syndicate of international tricksters” using the bank’s name. Still, until authorities can show tangible progress against their more criminally creative countrymen, Nigeria’s reputation as a paradise for fraud will remain secure. –
(With reporting by Helen Gibson/ London and Rhea Schoenthal/Bon)
(Courtesy: Time, April 18, 1994)
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