Festus Akanbi
28 June 2008
Lagos — The United States Postal Service has intercepted proceeds of internet scams worth over $2.1billion in Nigeria.
The interception was made during a recent visit of a15-man postal investigation team from the United States, who arrived Lagos to probe the activities of internet fraudsters using Nigeria as a base for the infamous activities.
According to Chris Siouris, a cyber investigator at the US Postal Inspectorate, the probe was informed by the rising number of American citizens who have reportedly fallen victims of the activities of scam syndicates. The syndicates are said to be working with the connivance of their collaborators in the US.
The team of investigators, during their three-month stay in Nigeria, succeeded in intercepting counterfeit cheques, lottery tickets and eBAY overpayment schemes with a face value of $2.1billion. The investigation was described as a follow-up to an offensive launched against cyber crimes by the US government earlier in the year.
The discovery coincided with imposition of a two-year jail term on a Washington-based woman on Wednesday her role in an internet counterfeit check scheme. Edna Fiedler pleaded guilty in March to attempting to defraud US citizens in a scheme known as a Nigerian check scam. Fiedler helped her accomplices in Nigeria send fake checks to people who had agreed to cash the checks on behalf of the sender, keeping some of the proceeds and sending the rest back.
The Nigerians found people willing to cash the fake checks via e-mail. They would send their names as well as fake documents that looked like Wal-Mart money orders, Bank of America checks, US Postal Service checks and American Express traveller's checks to Fiedler. They told her how to fill out the checks and where to send them.
The recipient's most likely thought they were helping out someone who needed a person in the US to cash a check for them, according to the U.S. Department of Justice. They were able to get the money by cashing the checks, and sent most of it to either Fiedler or her Nigerian accomplices. However, once the checks were discovered to be fake, the people who cashed them were responsible for the full amount.Fiedler had sent out $609,000 worth of phony checks and money orders. When US Secret Service agents investigating the case searched her house, they found additional fake checks worth more than $1.1 million that she was preparing to send out.
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