£1.3BN FRAUD GANG BUSTED Police arrest four for e-mail scam
Norman Silvester; Exclusive
A CRIME ring linked to a worldwide £1.3billion fraud has been smashed by police in Scotland.
Four Nigerians were arrested and charged with attempting to swindle a Dutch businessman.
Jacobus Groenen, 55, of Nuenen, near Eindhoven, flew to Scotland to meet the Nigerians at a rendezvous in Glasgow's Hilton Hotel.
He believed he was about to invest £15,000 in a dream deal that would bring him a return of £21million.
But after he arrived in Glasgow his suspicions were aroused when he couldn't find any details of the company and went to the police.
They traced the four Nigerians and arrested them. All appeared the next day at Glasgow Sheriff Court and were remanded in custody. All four men gave Edinburgh addresses.
A Strathclyde Police spokeswoman said: "We can confirm, that four males aged 34, 25, 39 and 33 were detained by police on Tuesday, March 4."
Police forces across the world are investigating a series of similar multi-million pound cons originating in Nigeria and other West African countries. But Strathclyde Police are among the first to make any arrests.
The scams usually involve an unsolicited e-mail or fax purporting to come from an African government official, the family of a deposed dictator or a bogus royal.
The sender claims to have access to millions of pounds but can't get it out of the country and asks for a cash payment upfront to unfreeze the accounts, offering a share of the proceeds to those prepared to put up the cash.
The National Criminal Intelligence Service say 150 Britons were stung last year alone, to the tune of £8.4million, an average loss of £56,675. The worldwide total is estimated at £1.3billion.
But police chiefs fear the amount reported is just a fraction of the real losses sustained by people tempted by "get rich quick" proposals and too embarrassed to admit they had been conned.
It is thought the arrests in Scotland targeted "collectors" - teams who travel from Nigeria to meet people who respond to the e-mails. |
