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<h1><b><font size=2 face="Courier New"><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:"Courier New"'>I thought I’d share this interesting article:<o:p></o:p></span></font></b></h1>
<h1><b><font size=2 face="Courier New"><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:"Courier New"'>URL: <a
href="http://theage.com.au/articles/2005/08/07/1123353197883.html">http://theage.com.au/articles/2005/08/07/1123353197883.html</a></span></font></b><span
lang=EN><o:p></o:p></span></h1>
<h1><b><font size=6 face="Times New Roman"><span lang=EN style='font-size:24.0pt'>The
scams keep coming</HEADLINE> <o:p></o:p></span></font></b></h1>
<p class=MsoNormal><st1:place w:st="on"><st1:City w:st="on"><font size=3
face="Times New Roman"><span lang=EN style='font-size:12.0pt'>Lagos</span></font></st1:City><span
lang=EN>, <st1:country-region w:st="on">Nigeria</st1:country-region></span></st1:place><span
lang=EN><br>
</BYLINE><DATE>August 12, 2005<o:p></o:p></span></p>
</DATE>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span lang=EN style='font-size:12.0pt'><!--articledetails-->Day
in, day out, a strapping, amiable 24-year-old who calls himself Kele B. heads
to an internet cafe, hunkers down at a computer and casts his net upon the
cyber-waters.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span lang=EN style='font-size:12.0pt'>Blithely
oblivious to signs on the walls and desks warning of the penalties for internet
fraud, he has sent out tens of thousands of emails telling recipients they have
won about $US6.4 million ($A8.31 million) in a bogus British government
"internet lottery."<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span lang=EN style='font-size:12.0pt'>"Congratulation!
You Are Our Lucky Winner!" it says.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span lang=EN style='font-size:12.0pt'>So
far, Kele says, he has had only one response. But he claims it paid off
handsomely. An American took the bait, he says, and coughed up "fees"
and "taxes" of more than $US5000, never to hear from Kele again.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><st1:place w:st="on"><st1:PlaceName w:st="on"><font size=3
face="Times New Roman"><span lang=EN style='font-size:12.0pt'>Festac</span></font></st1:PlaceName><span
lang=EN> <st1:PlaceType w:st="on">Town</st1:PlaceType></span></st1:place><span
lang=EN>, a district of Lagos where the scammers ply their schemes, has become
notorious for "419 scams," named for the section of the Nigerian
penal code that outlaws them.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span lang=EN style='font-size:12.0pt'>In
<st1:place w:st="on"><st1:PlaceName w:st="on">Festac</st1:PlaceName> <st1:PlaceType
w:st="on">Town</st1:PlaceType></st1:place>, an entire community of scammers
spends the night on the internet. By day they flaunt their smart clothes and
cars and hang around the internet cafes, trading stories about successful cons
and near misses, and hatching new plots.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><st1:place w:st="on"><st1:PlaceName w:st="on"><font size=3
face="Times New Roman"><span lang=EN style='font-size:12.0pt'>Festac</span></font></st1:PlaceName><span
lang=EN> <st1:PlaceType w:st="on">Town</st1:PlaceType></span></st1:place><span
lang=EN> is where communication specialists operating underground sell foreign
telephone lines over which a scammer can purport to be calling from any city in
the world. Here lurk master forgers and purveyors of such software as
"email extractors," which can harvest email addresses by the million.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span lang=EN style='font-size:12.0pt'>Now,
however, a three-year-old crackdown is yielding results, Nigerian authorities
say.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span lang=EN style='font-size:12.0pt'>Nuhu
Ribadu, head of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, says cash and
assets worth more than $US700 million were recovered from suspects between May
2003 and June 2004. More than 500 suspects have been arrested, more than 100
cases are before the courts and 500 others are under investigation, he said.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span lang=EN style='font-size:12.0pt'>The
agency won its first big court victory in May when Mike Amadi was sentenced to
16 years in prison for setting up a website that offered juicy but phoney
procurement contracts. Amadi cheekily posed as Ribadu himself and used the
agency's name. He was caught by an undercover agent posing as an Italian
businessman.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span lang=EN style='font-size:12.0pt'>This
month the biggest international scam of all - though not one involving the
internet - ended in court convictions. Amaka Anajemba was sentenced to 2½
years in prison and ordered to return $US25.5 million of the $US242 million she
helped to steal from a Brazilian bank.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span lang=EN style='font-size:12.0pt'>The
trial of four co-defendants is to start in September.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span lang=EN style='font-size:12.0pt'>Why
<st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Nigeria</st1:place></st1:country-region>?
There are many theories. The nation of 130 million, <st1:place w:st="on">Africa</st1:place>'s
most populous, is well educated, and English, the lingua franca of the scam
industry, is the official language. <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place
w:st="on">Nigeria</st1:place></st1:country-region> bursts with talent, from
former NBA star Hakeem Olajuwon to Nobel literature laureate Wole Soyinka.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span lang=EN style='font-size:12.0pt'>But
with World Bank studies showing a quarter of urban college graduates are
unemployed, crime offers tempting career opportunities - in drug dealing,
immigrant-trafficking, oil-smuggling, and internet fraud.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span lang=EN style='font-size:12.0pt'>The
scammers thrived during oil-rich <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place
w:st="on">Nigeria</st1:place></st1:country-region>'s 15 years of brutal and
corrupt military rule. Democracy was restored only six years ago.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span lang=EN style='font-size:12.0pt'>"We
reached a point when law enforcement and regulatory agencies seemed non-existent.
But the stance of the present administration has started changing that,"
said Ribadu, the scam-busting chief.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span lang=EN style='font-size:12.0pt'>President
Olusegun Obasanjo is winning <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">US</st1:place></st1:country-region>
praise for his crackdown. Interpol, the FBI and other Western law enforcement
agencies have stepped in to help, says police spokesman Emmanuel Ighodalo, and
Nigerian police have received equipment and Western training in combating
internet crime and money-laundering.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span lang=EN style='font-size:12.0pt'>Experts
say Nigerian scams continue to flood email systems, though many are being
blocked by spam filters that get smarter and more aggressive. America Online
spokesman Nicholas Graham says Nigerian messages lack the telltale signs of
other spam - such as embedded web links - but its filters can block
mail coming from a specific range of internet addresses.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span lang=EN style='font-size:12.0pt'>Also,
the scams have a limited shelf life.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span lang=EN style='font-size:12.0pt'>In
the con that internet users are probably most familiar with, the emailer poses
as a corrupt official looking for help in smuggling a fortune to a foreign bank
account. Email or fax recipients are told that if they provide their banking
and personal details and deposit certain sums of money, they'll get a cut of
the loot.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span lang=EN style='font-size:12.0pt'>But
there are other scams, like the fake lotteries.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span lang=EN style='font-size:12.0pt'>Kele
B., who won't give his surname, says he couldn't find work after finishing high
school in 2000 in the southeastern city of <st1:City w:st="on">Owerri</st1:City>,
so he drifted with friends to <st1:City w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Lagos</st1:place></st1:City>,
where he tried his hand at boxing.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span lang=EN style='font-size:12.0pt'>Then
he discovered the web.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span lang=EN style='font-size:12.0pt'>Now
he spends his mornings in internet cafes on second-hand computers with aged
screens, waiting "to see if my trap caught something," he says.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span lang=EN style='font-size:12.0pt'>Elekwa,
a chubby-faced 28-year-old who also keeps his surname to himself, shows up in <st1:place
w:st="on"><st1:PlaceName w:st="on">Festac</st1:PlaceName> <st1:PlaceType w:st="on">Town</st1:PlaceType></st1:place>
driving a Lexus and telling how he was jobless for two years despite having a
diploma in computer science.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span lang=EN style='font-size:12.0pt'>His
break came four years ago when the chief of a fraud gang saw him solve what
seemed like "a complex computer problem" at a business center in the
southeastern city of Umuahia and lured him to Lagos.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span lang=EN style='font-size:12.0pt'>He
won't talk about his scams, only about their fruits: "Now I have three
cars, I have two houses and I'm not looking for a job anymore."<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span lang=EN style='font-size:12.0pt'>No
one knows for sure which of these dodges, if any, were invented in Nigeria, but
fraudsters in the West African nation have made them so famous that they are
often called "419 scams," after the clause in the Nigerian penal code
that outlaws them. A look at some of the more common ones:<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><b><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span lang=EN style='font-size:12.0pt;
font-weight:bold'>"You don't know me, but I used to be married to a
corrupt dictator ..."</span></font></b><span lang=EN><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span lang=EN style='font-size:12.0pt'>Nigerians
are most commonly associated with scams featuring purported officials or
relatives of dead dictators seeking help in getting millions of dollars out of <st1:country-region
w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Nigeria</st1:place></st1:country-region> or any
other African country. Victims are promised a large chunk of the money
supposedly stolen from the state treasury, but first must put up money to show
their trustworthiness. Variations include proposals for lucrative oil,
construction or procurement contracts purported to have been issued by some
state-owned company or government department, all with the object of extracting
payments from the victim in the form of taxes, fees and bribes to facilitate
the promised payoff.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><b><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span lang=EN style='font-size:12.0pt;
font-weight:bold'>"You're in luck ..."</span></font></b><span
lang=EN><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span lang=EN style='font-size:12.0pt'>Targets
are told they have come into some sudden fortune and need only complete a few
bureaucratic procedures to claim it. These procedures turn out to be costly.
Victims are often churches and charities which are told that a millionaire
somewhere has willed them a fortune.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><b><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span lang=EN style='font-size:12.0pt;
font-weight:bold'>"You Are Our Lucky Winner!"</span></font></b><span
lang=EN><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span lang=EN style='font-size:12.0pt'>Millions
of e-mails are sent telling recipients they have won millions of dollars (or
any hard currency) in an "official internet lottery." The
"winners" are given the name of an agent who will handle upfront
"taxes" and other levies.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><b><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span lang=EN style='font-size:12.0pt;
font-weight:bold'>"Your price is right..."</span></font></b><span
lang=EN><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span lang=EN style='font-size:12.0pt'>A
scammer contacts someone selling a car or other valuable over the internet and
accepts the advertised price. The scammer sends the seller a check for perhaps
twice the amount, then claims to have made a mistake and asks the seller to
wire the difference to a bank account in <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place
w:st="on">Nigeria</st1:place></st1:country-region> or elsewhere. The seller
obliges, then discovers the check sent to him is fake.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Arial><span lang=EN-AU style='font-size:
10.0pt;font-family:Arial'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Arial><span lang=EN-AU style='font-size:
10.0pt;font-family:Arial'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Arial><span lang=EN-AU style='font-size:
10.0pt;font-family:Arial'>________________________________________</span></font><span
lang=EN-AU><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><strong><b><font size=2 face=Arial><span lang=EN-AU
style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'>Therese Keane</span></font></b></strong><span
lang=EN-AU><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span lang=EN-AU
style='font-size:12.0pt'> <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Arial><span lang=EN-AU style='font-size:
10.0pt;font-family:Arial'>Director of Information Technology</span></font><span
lang=EN-AU><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Arial><span lang=EN-AU style='font-size:
10.0pt;font-family:Arial'>Kilvington Girls' Grammar</span></font><span
lang=EN-AU><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><st1:Street w:st="on"><st1:address w:st="on"><font size=2
face=Arial><span lang=EN-AU style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'>2
Leila Road</span></font></st1:address></st1:Street><span lang=EN-AU><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Arial><span lang=EN-AU style='font-size:
10.0pt;font-family:Arial'>Ormond, Vic 3204 </span></font><span lang=EN-AU><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span lang=EN-AU
style='font-size:12.0pt'> <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Arial><span lang=EN-AU style='font-size:
10.0pt;font-family:Arial'>Phone: +61 3 9578 6231</span></font><span lang=EN-AU><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Arial><span lang=EN-AU style='font-size:
10.0pt;font-family:Arial'>Fax: +61 3 9578 3378</span></font><span
lang=EN-AU><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span lang=EN-AU
style='font-size:12.0pt'> <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Arial><span lang=EN-AU style='font-size:
10.0pt;font-family:Arial'><a href="http://www.kilvington.vic.edu.au">www.kilvington.vic.edu.au</a></span></font><span
lang=EN-AU><o:p></o:p></span></p>
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style='font-size:12.0pt'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
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