FBI and Spanish police arrest 310 fraudsters

20 July 2005

MALAGA — A joint operation between the FBI and Spanish police saw the arrest of  310 people in the Malaga area in connection with a EUR100m bogus lottery scam run by Nigerian gangs.

The scam claimed at least 20,000 victims in 45 countries including Britain, France, Germany, the United States, Canada, Australia, Japan and a number of Arabic countries.

The operation, codenamed Nile, centred on a gang which operated in the Malaga area of the Costa del Sol.

The fraudsters were offering lottery prizes for bogus competitions sent most often by email.

They also claimed to be paying out a legacy from an African dignitary through a functionary at a bank.

The emails would offer the chance to claim money which had been left to the recipient as a legacy because of the dignitary’s death or because of a natural catastrophe.

All the person had to do was to pay cash into an account, but of course they would never hear of the supposed legacy again.

They tried to use all manner of persuasion to get victims to part with their cash, even suggesting that the money had been taken out of Iraq by the family of the ex-dictator Saddam Hussein or that it had been found in the remains of the Twin Towers after the 9/11 attacks.

Another ploy was to claim recipients could take part in a lottery and win millions of dollars.

They often said the operation was ‘secret’ in order to stop the recipient from reporting the matter to police.

Four hundred officers from the Spanish police, the FBI and the US Postal Service were involved in the operation.

Officers raided 166 homes in Málaga, Fuengirola, Benalmádena, Mijas, Torremolinos, Velez-Málaga and Marbella.

It is the largest operation ever carried out against Nigerian and Libyan organised crime gangs.

[Copyright EFE with Expatica]

Subject: Spanish news