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Man Arrested in Australia Over Nigerian E-mail Scam

Posted by CowboyNeal on from the urgent-proposals dept.

slasher_14 writes "A 39 year old Sydney man has been arrested over the Nigerian Scam. Simultanious raids were conducted in two homes by police, who siezed computers and documents. Over the last 6 months, Australian police have tracked about 1.5 million dollars. The man faces Dubbo Local court today, charged with 17 offenses." Hopefully this means my inbox will be seeing less of these e-mails.

4 of 346 comments (clear)

  1. This is going to make all the difference by heironymouscoward · · Score: 4, Informative

    Like... the centre of 419 spamming is Amsterdam and London AFAIK, and it's such a large business that arresting one guy is pretty much meaningless.

    PCs should simply come with warning stickers: "ATTENTION: if anyone offers you money, advice on making money, or easy ways to make money, HE IS A CROOK. (if you don't believe us, please send $1000 to us in small bills IMMEDIATELY to learn it the hard way.)"

    --
    Ceci n'est pas une signature
  2. The US Secret Services pages on this scam: by ron_ivi · · Score: 4, Informative

    http://www.secretservice.gov/alert419.shtml "The Financial Crimes Division of the Secret Service receives approximately 100 telephone calls from victims/potential victims and 300-500 pieces of related correspondence per day."

  3. Not the *only* person.... by MrClever · · Score: 5, Informative

    Here in the land of Oz, last night's broadcast news (and repeated this morning and again a few minutes ago on the mid-day news), this Australian arrest was part of multi-national raid involving basically every continent except Antarctica!!

    IIRC some of the noteable arrests occured in Cairo, Amsterdam, Australia, Malaysia and Singapore. This was (is??) a global scam, but evidence is stacking up to suggest this Australian connection was one of the key players (not merely a pawn).

  4. Re:Thank God we're seeing more of this by rifter · · Score: 4, Informative

    " > These 419 scams (named after the nigerian police code) can be dangerous. There have been reports of where people have actually gone to foreign countries and then been kidnapped forcing the familes to pay a ransom note."

    Sounds like natural selection to me. I'm surprised they figured out how to book the plane ticket.

    Discovery channel had a special on these, and said they actually predated fax machines. Originally the scams were sent by first class mail (so, no, putting a stamp on spam will not stop it, at least in this case), then by international fax (again expensive) when fax machines were invented, then by email when that became available.

    Then they explained that people were actually paying these spammers and going to foreign countries to meet them at the bank, etc. As if that was not bad enough, they interviewed a successful businessman and multimillionaire who gave them every last dime of his cash over a period of years! I guess that proves you don't have to be smart or even hard working to become a rich businessman in the US (though I haven't made it yet, and would not give the Nigerian spammers a dime). :P