Professor Olu Agbi, the Nigerian high commissioner stationed in Australia, says the perpetrators behind his country’s e-mail based financial scams aren’t the only one who should be punished -- the victims, blinded by their greed and excitement, should be thrown in jail as well.
According to the Sydney Morning Herald, Agbi’s comments came from a Thursday-morning report accusing Nigerian fraudsters of scamming Australian citizens out of nearly $3 million a month – or almost $36 million a year.
Nigeria receives a “bad image” as a result of its reputation as a haven for e-mail, mail, and bank fraud, says Agbi, and those who wish to do legitimate business with his country are “always very suspicious.”
“The Nigerian Government frowns very seriously on these scams … and every day tries to track down those who are involved,” he said, noting that less than one tenth of a percent of the country’s 140 million people are involved in any kind of scamming. “It is not in the character of Nigerians to be engaged in this kind of scam.”
Rather, he says, the people involved at the receiving end of Nigerian scams – “greedy” Australians, in his words – should be arrested as well, for their role in supporting Nigerian-based scammers who find their marks around the world.
Around the world, figures on losses from “419 fraud” vary wildly. A BBC report published in 2006 said the UK loses around £150m ($278m USD) per year to Nigerian mail scams, while the US-based Internet Crime Complaint Center’s annual Internet Crime Report revealed that just over one percent of the complaints it received in 2007, totaling $239m, came from 419 scams. In almost all cases, the average losses per victim tend to hover around a couple thousand dollars.
“People who send their money are as guilty as those who are asking them to send the money,” Agbi said.
Detective Superintendent Col Dyson, head of the New South Wales police service’s fraud squad, expressed willingness to work with the Nigerian government on an education campaign for warning potential victims, which he likened to gambling addicts – addicted to the thrill of a large possible windfall.
“The bottom line is anything that sounds too good to be true is too good to be true,” said Dyson.