Ah, don’t you love those Nigerian scammers? I’m the brother of Finance Minister… Well, they are finally being prosecuted and going to jail.

Banco Noroeste – Brazil

In the biggest scam of its sort, three Nigerian scammers managed to steal $242 million dollars from Banco Noroesto, a bank in Brazil. The Nigerians came up with a fake contract to build an airport in Abuja, the capital of Nigeria. They promised a bank official a healthy commission in exchange for funding the contract. Sound familiar? Of course, there was no airport and the scammers headed off with the money. The bank, in turn, collapsed and customers lost everything.

In a joint investigation by Nigerian and Brazilian officials, the three fraudsters were identified as Emmanuel Nwude, Nzeribe Okoli and Amaka Anajemba. In prosecution efforts, Nwude and Okoli plead guilty to numerous crimes and forfeited $121.5 million dollars in assets. Anajemba rolled on the other two and received a two and half year sentence after agreeing to give back $48.5 million. Nobody has explained what happened to the other $70 million.

Nigeria Corruption

Nigeria is currently considered the sixth most corrupt country in the world. To deal with these problems, an independent Economic and Financial Crimes Commission has been set up in Nigeria to go after all the fraudulent activity. The “EFCC” has the stated goal of:

“The EFCC will curb the menace of corruption that constitutes the cog in the wheel of progress; protect national and foreign investments in the country; imbue the spirit of hard work in the citizenry and discourage ill gotten wealth; identify illegally acquired wealth and confiscate it; build an upright workforce in both public and private sectors of the economy and; contribute to the global war against financial crimes.”

While a bit utopian, the Commission has a lot of power and is making a beeline for the people sending you the fraudulent emails. At this time, the Commission claims to have arrested over 200 email scammers and seized assets in excess of $200 million dollars.

Warning

While this is all very nice, there is a certain amount of common sense involved in this issue. Do you really believe someone will contact you out of the blue with a desire to give you a few million dollars?

Just because you are on the Internet, it doesn’t mean you should abandon your common sense when you start reading email. Trust me, such offers aren’t legitimate.

Richard A. Chapo is a San Diego business lawyer with http://www.sandiegobusinesslawfirm.com - a San Diego business law firm in San Diego, California.

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