news.yahoo.com/s/latimests/20051020/ts_latimes/iwilleatyourdollars
Los Angeles Times 'I Will Eat Your Dollars' By Robyn Dixon Times Staff Writer Thu Oct 20, 7:55 AM ET FESTAC, Nigeria As patient as fishermen, the young men toil day and nig ht, trawling for replies to the e-mails they shoot to strangers half a w orld away.
Most recipients hit delete, delete, delete, delete without ever opening t he messages that urge them to claim the untold riches of a long-lost dec eased second cousin, and the messages that offer millions of dollars to help smuggle loot stolen by a corrupt Nigerian official into a US acco unt. But the few who actually reply make this a tempting and lucrative busines s for the boys of Festac, a neighborhood of Lagos at the center of the c yber-scam universe. The targets are called maghas scammer slang from a Yoruba word meaning fool, and refers to gullible white people. Samuel is 19, handsome, bright, well-dressed and ambitious. Until he quit the game last year, he was one of Festac's best-known cyber-scam champions. Like nearly everyone here, he is desperate to escape the run-down, teemin g streets, the grimy buildings, the broken refrigerators stacked outside , the strings of wet washing. It's the kind of place where plainclothes police prowl the streets extorting bribes, where mobs burn thieves to de ath for stealing a cellphone, and where some people paint "This House Is Not For Sale" in big letters on their homes, in case someone posing as the owner tries to put it on the market. It is where places like the Net Express cyber cafe thrive. The atmosphere of silent concentration inside the cafe is absolute, stran gely reminiscent of a university library before exams. The doors are locked from 10:30 pm until 7 am, so the cyber thieves can work in peace without fear of armed int ruders. In this sanctum, Samuel says, he extracted thousands of American e-mail a ddresses, sent off thousands of fraudulent letters, and waited for repli es. He thinks disclosure of his surname could endanger his safety. The e-mail scammers here prefer hitting Americans, whom they see as rich and easy to fool. They rationalize the crime by telling themselves there are no real victims: Maghas are avaricious and complicit. To them, the scams, called 419 after the Nigerian statute against fraud, are a game. Their anthem, "I Go Chop Your Dollars," hugely popular in Lagos, hit the airwaves a few months ago as a CD penned by an artist called Osofia: "419 is just a game, you are the losers, we are the winners. White people are greedy, I can say they are greedy White men, I will eat your dollars, will take your money and disappear. Scammers, he said, "have the belief that white men are stupid and greedy. There's this belief that for every dollar they lose, the American government will pay them back in s ome way." What makes the scams so tempting for the targets is that they promise a t antalizing escape from the mundane disappointments of life. The scams of fer fabulous riches or the love of your life, but first the magha has to send a series of escalating fees and payments. In a dating scam, for in stance, the fraudsters send pictures taken from modeling websites. " one hapless American wrote rece ntly to a scammer seeking $1,200. The scammer replied, "Would you send the money this week so I may buy a t icket?" Don't you w orry your pretty lil head, hun," the victim wrote back. The real push comes when the fictional girlfriend or fiancee, who claims to be in America, goes to Nigeria for business. In a series of "mishaps, " her wallet is stolen and she is held hostage by the hotel owner until she can come up with hundreds of dollars for the bill. She needs a new a irline ticket, has to bribe churlish customs officials and gets caught.
Secret Service estimates such schemes net hundreds of millions of dollars annually world wide, with many victims too afraid or embarrassed to report their losses . Basil Udotai of the government's Nigerian Cybercrime Working Group said 4 19 fraud represents a tiny portion of Nigerian computer crime, but is ta ken seriously by authorities because of the damage it does to the countr y's reputation. "The government is not just sitting on its hands," he said. "It's very im portant for the international community to know that Nigeria is not glos sing over the problem of 419. We are putting together measures that will tackle all forms of online crime and give law enforcement agencies oppo rtunities to combat it." Asishana Okauru, acting director of financial intelligence for the govern ment's Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, said $700 million relat ing to 419 crime had been seized in the two years since the establishmen t of the EFCC. There have been 12 convictions in such cases brought duri ng that time, he said. Okauru said he felt this was a good result given the sluggishness of Nigeria's legal system, but critics say the courts a re too slow and corrupt. Nigerian authorities, extremely sensitive about 419 crime, say the scamme rs are mostly from other countries, and that any Nigerians who participa te do so because of high unemployment and, above all, the greed of victi ms. When Samuel, at age 15, sat down in a cyber cafe and started drilling awa y at the keyboard, he had no idea he was being watched by one of Festac' s cyber-crime wizards. After noting Samuel's speed and skill, the crime boss, nicknamed Shepherd, invited him to his mansion to try extracting e -mail addresses using search engines. Then, to make Samuel feel special, he took him shopping for designer clothes. When you're around him he makes you feel you have n o problems," Samuel said. Shepherd hooked him with the same bait he uses for maghas. "He said every hour I spent online I could be making good money," Samuel recalled. A teenager who didn't really know about the scams, Samuel was "a bit conf used" when Shepherd offered him 20% of the take. "But I looked at everyt hing he had, and it got into my head, actually. Eager to impress his new boss, Samuel worked for six-hour stretches extra cting e-mail addresses and sending off letters that had been composed by a college graduate also working for Shepherd. He sent 500 e-mails a day and usually received about seven replies. "When you get a reply, it's 70% sure that you'll get the money," Samuel s aid. Soon he was working for two bosses, Shepherd and Colosi, both well known to authorities but neither of them bothered in a place where police invo lvement in the scams is widely alleged. "Most of the time you look for American contacts because of the value of the dollar, and because the fraudsters here have contacts in America who wrap up the job over there," Samuel said. "For example, the offshore pe ople will go to pose as the Nigerian ambassador to the US, or as gover nment officials. They will show some documents: This has presidential ba cking, this has government backing. And you will be convinced because th ey will tell you in such a way that you won't be able to say no." After a scam letter surfaced this summer bearing the forged signature of Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo, police raided a market in the Oluw ole neighborhood of Lagos, one of six main centers that provide document s used in the 419 scams. They seized thousands of foreign and Nigerian p assports, 10,000 blank British Airways tickets, 10,000 US money orders , customs documents, fake university certificates, 500 printing plates a nd 500 computers. A stolen US passport fetches $2,500 on the black mar ket here. The scams often involve bogus Internet sites, such as lottery websites, o r oil company, bank or government sites. The scammers sometimes use Lond on phone prefixes to make victims think they are calling Britain. Though the fraud is apparent to many, some people think they have stumble d on a once-in-a-lifetime deal, and scammers can string them along for m onths with mythical difficulties. Some victims eventually contribute hug e sums of money to save the deal when it is suddenly "at risk." Stephen Kovacsics of American Citizen Services, an office of the US Con sulate, spoke to a victim who had lost $200,000. Kovacsics says he is awakened several nights a week by Americans pleading for ...
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