Cummins Family - Nigerian Mail Scammers Arrested

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July 12, 2004

Nigerian Mail Scammers Arrested

Over 500 people have been arrested what the Guardian Unlimited calls "begging letter" scams. If you have an e-mail address, chances are that you have received one the many incarnations of this scam at least once... Now, thanks to British Police and a 100+ man squad of Nigerian "untouchables", we might not see many of those letters in the future...

Excerpts from "Police swoop on Nigerian email fraud ringleaders"
by Conal Walsh of The Observer
...More than 500 suspected fraudsters have been arrested, and $500 million of assets seized, in an international crackdown on West African 'advance fee' fraud involving the City of London police...

...Most of the suspects have been arrested in Nigeria over the past month in an operation coordinated by the coun try's Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, acting on intelligence from London and elsewhere...

...Under diplomatic pressure, Nigeria has also set up a 100-strong squad of 'untouchable' police officers devoted to rooting out the fraud...

...Those arrested in the past month are rumoured to include prominent Nigerian politicians, civil servants and lawyers, although this has not been confirmed by the prosecuting authorities....

Posted by Michael at July 12, 2004 12:55 AM

Comment: It's good to hear that something is being done about this, although there's literally still MILLIONS of other scammers still free throughout the world. It's all well and good for those of us savvy enough to recognize a scam to sit back and write something like this. However, there are still literally MILLIONS of other people out there who are not so savvy, who are simply making their first foray into the World Wide Web, or for whatever reason, are not aware of the level of danger that scammers like this pose. There is no quick and easy answer for this problem. Working for an ISP, I always joked that they should require people to be licensed before buying a computer. Or at least take some form of 'intelligence' test before being allowed to sign online for the first time. Yet, I still remember my first time signing on to the internet. Way back when AOL was still running under Windows 3.11 and their DOS version was still accessible as well. Has it really been that long???? Man... I'm begining to feel old.

Posted by: JP Balzen at August 2, 2004 12:27 AM

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