Toronto Star May. 31, 2001.
Millions disappear in Nigerian mail fraud
James Daw
MONEY TALK
COL. GOGO HASSAN, Samuel Anyim, Tanko Ladi, Chuks Gorgor or Maryam Abacha must have something against me. They never call. They never write.
Each year Nigerians offer millions of American dollars' worth of business proposals around the world. For me, nothing.
These offers of something for nothing should fairly be flooding in here, given roadblocks in the United States. Spoilsport postal agents in New York have seized 6 million offers since 1998.
No one knows how many arrive. But a strictly confidential letter did make it through, via South Africa, to my old university roommate, Bob Gibson.
Col. Gogo Hassan of Lagos, Nigeria, offered him a cool $25.5 million (U.S.), 100 per cent safe and risk-free.
My ex-roommate's only task was to take $85 million (U.S.) into the account of an ecological magazine he publishes with his students at University of Waterloo.
Gogo must have been drawn by Gibson's business acumen, or possibly his red beard and green heart. You see, Gogo had to clean up a mess - highly toxic concentrations of cash left by the deceased commander of his peace-keeping force who padded arms invoices.
A born cynic, Gibson let the opportunity pass before he got a request for cash to grease palms abroad.
Investigator Colin McCann of the Ontario Securities Commission says other Ontario residents were recently peppered by e-mail with strikingly similar offers:
Samuel Anyim wanted to sneak $32 million (U.S.) out of his country as a favour to his brother, a Nigerian senator nervous about being impeached.
Government-appointee Tanko Ladi found inflated contracts awarded during the dictatorship of Sani Abacha and wanted to siphon out a reasonable sum, say $38.5 million (U.S.).
Abacha's wife Maryam managed to preserve $35.5 million (U.S.) and wanted to get it out.
Chuks Gorgor planned to slip a bogus $15.5 million (U.S.) contract past his colleagues at the ministry of works and planning.
While McCann is doubtful, who's to say one of these crooks is not legit? Crime fighters may be too jaded, seeing bad apples in every barrel.
``We're looking at a Mount Everest of fraud,'' the chief of the financial crimes division at the U.S. Secret Service recently said of Nigeria.
But, if some larcenous Nigerian ever did share 10 per cent to 30 per cent of his loot with a complete stranger, the cops might not have found out. Only skeptics and losers speak up.
One loser was Mark Dobis of Toronto, a former accounting manager for Electro Canada. He confessed to wiring $1.8 million in company funds to Germany to help an official of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corp. get $35.7 million out of his country.
Bye-bye money, hello house arrest (which started earlier this month).
Official skepticism was further fed by 30 Americans who formed The 419 Coalition, named for the fraud section of Nigeria's criminal code. All of the founders paid advance fees to foreigners and got nothing in return. Their Web site urges other losers to forward information to the Secret Service, Royal Canadian Mounted Police and other nations' security agencies that keep track.
One Oregon man says he deliberately made himself a victim to gather material for his self-published and self-distributed novel.
Brian Wizard, whom you can find with any Internet browser, says he went so far as to travel to Europe. There he was shown a suitcase of marked American bills and a sample of the expensive chemicals he would have to buy for his contacts to clean them up. Others he knows met and were stung by Nigerians in Canada.
``There is a small civilian movement to combat Nigerian scamsters and I am part of it,'' Wizard says. But his ultimate weapon - education - has only earned him about 400 sales of his $5 (U.S.) book.
Authorities only want to hear from suckers who lost money. Their information will be fed into databases to help joint-agency task forces, here and in Nigeria.
``We want to stop this kind of fraud at the origin, but with advances in technology (like the Internet) it is a very difficult and complicated task,'' says Marc Connolly of the Secret Service.
So you and I may yet get a letter from Nigeria, or something similar. Then we can be our judge of character and test our intelligence.
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Eureka! Minutes after sending this column to the editor, I got e-mail from Abacha, via her personal assistant, Uman Idris. Her urgent offer: A 40/60 split of $42 million. Gotta go.
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Money Talk appears Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. James Daw can be reached at Money Talk, Business, 1 Yonge St., Toronto ON M5E 1E6; at (416) 945-8633; (416) 865-3630 by fax; or at jdaw@thestar.ca for e-mail.
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