p2pnet news | Crime:- There’s as much online junk mail around today as there ever was, despite attempts to stop it, and some of the most prolific efforts continue to originate in Nigeria, home of the 419 spam scam.

Now six men, five from West Africa, including two Nigerians, have been arrested in Holland following any scam that cost an Australian $US1.5 million, says news.com.au.

“We are talking about a massive fraud using marketing techniques,” the story has Harry Jongkind, co-ordinator of a Dutch police operation dedicated to Internet-based scams.

The scam started a year ago in Japan before spreading to other countries, winding up in Amsterdam where the Australian victim went to meet his alleged business partners.

“After advancing large sums of money, supposedly for such things as notary fees, the Australian man finally started getting the idea that he was being ripped off, police said,” according to news.com.au.

“He alerted Dutch police who were then able to arrest the three suspected swindlers in an Amsterdam hotel where they had arranged to meet the Australian with a suitcase full of money claiming it would soon be his.”

There could be as many as 18,000 scam crooks who use techniques such as faking the websites of major international banks, and openning accounts with borrowed names and phony companies, says the story.

Scammers often pose as the relatives of high officials with access to elicit funds, counting on victims’ greed and their willingness to become involved in what are presented from the very beginning as nefarious schemes.

Click the mic on the right to hear David Bannister’s p2pnetcast of this story >>>>

Slashdot it!

Also See:
news.com.au – Aussie loses $1.7m in Nigerian scam, August 9, 2007

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This entry was posted on Friday, August 10th, 2007 at 9:33 am and is filed under Crime. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

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