Ten Scammers Indicted in Nigerian Spam Scam

Ten people have been indicted on federal charges for running a Nigerian spam operation in California. The scam, which targeted senior citiczens, raked in over $1 million. The spammers sent out messages claiming the recipients had inherited huge sums of money from distant relatives. All the recipients had to do was send a small processing fee. Of course as they fell deeper and deeper into the scheme, the need for more and larger fees would arise. In all over two dozen people were victimized.

Authorities say the ringleader, Nigerian national Claudio Uche Dibe, was charged with 15 counts of wire fraud. Bright Amesi, and Briceson Loving were also hit with the same charges and seven other people were hit with 10 counts of wire fraud each.

According to prosecutors, one of the accused scammers wrote in an email that one victim “is insisting that he does not have more money, though I believe he will be able to come up with money …. I believe that … he will pay big money, which is what we are all after.”

Nigerian scams, also known as 419 scams (after the section of the Nigerian criminal code they fall under), have been around forever. Despite the high quality spam filters out there, they still get through. I get several a week. It’s hard to believe anyone still falls for them but they do, and the scammers are still making tidy profits.

In the beginning they were always from some exiled member of an obscure country’s royal family or a lawyer claiming to represent some long lost family member. These days they’ve gotten more creative. Some pretend to be attractive, lovelorn women from Russia and other foreign countries, others claim to be representatives of a lottery you’ve won. Sometimes legit companies like Microsoft and Yahoo! are used to make them seem more convincing. The stories may change but the scam is always the same. They ask for more and more fees until the victim is bled dry and then they disappear leaving the victim penniless.