This Feb. 2, 2015, photo depicts a part of a U.S. $100 bill.(Photo: Jon Elswick, ap)
Scam letters in Nigeria are nothing new.
They’re commonly known as the 419, says Sam Olukoya, a journalist based in Lagos.
Part of the reason why the malware-hacked emails are so popular in Nigeria is because they’re inexpensive to construct.<span style="color: Red;">*</span>
With almost 61%<span style="color: Red;">*</span>of the Nigerian population in poverty, it also makes for easy money.
“There are so many people trying to make a business out of this. It’s quite a thriving business. One, it’s so easy to establish you just need a few hundred dollars to buy a computer, to buy internet, to buy data and that’s business,” Olukoya says.
Despite the frequency of scamming emails in Nigeria, one skillful con<span style="color: Red;">*</span>artist stands out. The head of a multinational network was arrested Monday in the capital of Nigeria’s River State, Port Harcourt.
The network was headed by a 40-year-old Nigerian known as "Mike."<span style="color: Red;">*</span>The network,<span style="color: Red;">*</span>composed<span style="color: Red;">*</span>of over 40 individuals spread across Nigeria, Malaysia and South Africa, was behind global scams worth more than $60 million.
“You can understand how elaborate this type of scam is, if somebody has made $60 million, that doesn’t come easy,” Olukoya says.
“He’s believed to have hacked into the accounts of some medium- and small-scale establishments and using that to ask people to pay money to accounts which he controlled,” Olukoya explains. “These people were assuming that these accounts belonged to the companies they have been dealing with.”
His operations used malware to take over systems, fake email accounts to ask businesses for money and romance scams.<span style="color: Red;">*</span>
According to Interpol’s website, it is believed that one fraudulent transaction by Mike and his associates landed them $1.5 million.
Even though Nigeria isn’t the only country to conduct advance-fee frauds, 51%<span style="color: Red;">*</span>of it comes from the western African country,<span style="color: Red;">*</span>
according to a Microsoft report.
Across the internet, these scamming emails are known as the subject of a meme: the Nigerian Prince,<span style="color: Red;">*</span>a common type of social engineering scheme that includes a so-called Nigerian royal figure soliciting the reader to transfer<span style="color: Red;">*</span>thousands of dollars<span style="color: Red;">*</span>with the promise that they will reward them with a larger sum in the end.
Here’s how one would start, according to the<span style="color: Red;">*</span>
Washington Post:
DEAR SIR, I am Prince Kufour Otumfuo the elder son of the late King Otumfuo Opoku ware II whose demise occur following a brief illness. Before the death of my father, King Otumfuo Opoku ware II, I was authorised and officially known as the next successor and beneficiary of my father's property according to African Traditional rite. …
Olukoya receives these types of emails every day. One text message asked him to call a number to "reactivate"<span style="color: Red;">*</span>his ATM card for a bank account he didn't own.<span style="color: Red;">*</span>He recognized it as a scam, but others aren't so lucky.
"I imagine that so many people would have called the same number. What he would have done was he would have been able to get the details on the card," Olukoya says. "When he gets the details, he will definitely empty their bank account."
This article originally appeared on
PRI.org.<span style="color: Red;">*</span>Its content was created separately to USA TODAY.
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