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| Africa: Subsaharan |
| Nigeria Returns $4.5N to Little Old Lady Fraud Victim |
| 2005-10-09 |
| Nigeria returned $4.5 million seized from scammers to an 86-year-old Chinese woman last month, the West African country's financial crimes agency said Saturday. A Nigerian fraud ring swindled Juliana Ching, of Hong Kong, through false promises that she and her daughter would benefit from a contract supposedly offered by the state-owned Nigerian oil company, said Osita Nwajah, spokesman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission. The scammers told Ching they needed to use her account to temporarily deposit $25 million, promising her 25 percent of the sum. Instead, between 1995 and 2000, they withdrew $4.5 million of Ching's own money. Nigeria has earned global notoriety as a base for criminals arranging "advance fee" scams. Among the most common are e-mails proposing to share portions of dead African dictators' ill-gotten estates in exchange for an advance payment to help move the money overseas. The scammers keep the fees while victims receive nothing. |
| Posted by:Fred |
| #2 go digital - saves repair on those analog meters |
| Posted by: Frank G 2005-10-09 22:56 |
| #1 Sorry, zero sympathy for the "little old lady." She had 4.5 million in the bank, but went along with such a transparent scam that "promised" more. Why? GREED. I've got to quit reading this stuff - it's getting expensive sending out my sympathy meter to have the needle unwrapped from around the peg. |
| Posted by: Barbara Skolaut 2005-10-09 22:38 |