Nine Nigerians jailed in Ghana for bank scam

   LAGOS, March 10, 2008 – Nine Nigerians have been jailed in Ghana for
faking e-mails and letters, including one from the Ghanaian president, to dupe
a Frenchman out of 185,000 dollars (120,000 euros), reports said Sunday.
   The nine were sentenced to five years each in the Ghanaian capital Accra on
February 29 after being found guilty of fraud, according to Ghana’s GNA press
agency.
   They were found to have faked a series of official-looking mastheads from
the office of the president, the heads of police, national security and the
prosecutor-general, plus the governor of the central bank.
   One victim was Frenchman Gilles Gillet de Laumont, who believed an e-mail
telling him there was 8.5 million dollars waiting for him in a Ghanaian bank
account if he deposited 185,000 dollars there to cover taxes and expenses.
   The e-mail was accompanied by official-looking letters, including a faked
one from the governor of the central bank.
   Gillet de Laumont travelled to Ghana in May 2005 to deposit 35,000 dollars
and was expected to return in September to hand over the remaining 150,000.
   But alerted to the fact he was being ripped off by a Ghanaian friend in
France, he contacted Ghana’s police.
   The police quickly broke the criminal gang, who had been using a cybercafe
to conduct their fraud.

AFP