Businesses targeted by e-mail fraudsters

September 2000

Businesses in Wexford are facing a new type of attempted fraud as Nigerian crime gangs turn to the internet and e-mail instead of using fax machines.

In recent years, some local businesses had almost gotten used to receiving faxed messages promising sums of millions of dollars in return for personal details and bank account numbers, but now those messages are starting to arrive by the new technology of e-mail instead.

One local businessman said that if anything, the messages are becoming more frequent.

‘ To be honest, I didn’t think they’d even have e-mail in a place like Nigeria, but they must have and it must work pretty well too, if the number of these messages I get is anything to go by,’ he said.

‘Before, I used to see maybe one a month or every two months. Now there’s maybe one a week,’ he added.

The latest hoax mail received essentially offers a $4 million return for setting up facilities to receive $20 million ‘ liberated’ from a secret fund once owned by former Nigerian leader, Sami Abacha.

‘My main reason of writing is that we have secured $20M in a suspence (sic) account in the bank for onward transfer that was secretly kept by my former boss which we urgently want to send abroad for investment purposes,’ it reads.

‘All we require from you is to receive this fund on our behalf,’ says the e-mail, which purports to be from a man called Thomas Obi.

However, the e-mail goes on to ask for details such as bank name and account number of the account that the person wants the $20 million paid into. People are advised never to share these details over the internet.

Gardaí also advise people to treat such e-mails with caution if they happen to receive one. They say one indication that an e-mail is most likely a fraud is if it is sent from a common e-mail address like Hotmail or Yahoo instead of a business dot com one. They say to never reply to such e-mails, under any circumstances.