Nigerian email scam: Conmen lure online users with lottery money in RBI name

The Nigerian con game of looting the gullible through internet has once again surfaced in Telangana town after a lull.

The awareness campaign by the Telangana police and alert to internet users of the crime, asking them not to respond to emails from unidentified persons offering big money, instances of Nigerian such frauds had dipped a bit.

Now the Nigerian tricksters have realized this, and changed their modus operandi and are trying out new inducements online to con people and take them for a ride. They are now attaching to lottery prizes names of popular brands such as Coca Cola, BBC, ICICI – anything that is a brand of repute and easily recognized by a discerning person.

The recent arrest of two foreigners and seizure of laptops containing lakhs of email ids with drafts congratulating recipients of being selected for the prize money confirmed that the tricksters continue to strike. Police have identified 22 such operators mostly Nigerian but also some from Sudan and Singapore conducting such operations not only in India but also in middle east and South East.

The e-mail would announce that s/he had won a huge sum of money. S/he would only need to part with some money, thousands when compared to the lakhs promised in the lottery prize. The gullible would lap it up, and transfer the amount to the sender, in the hope of the promised windfall.

Once the transaction is over, the tricksters vanish with the money and as usual neither of these brands own up and yet another poor and gullible is on the streets.This is how fraudsters from Nigeria lured their victims, and operated their racket.

The baits have also changed. The fresh lures are millions of unclaimed US dollars in bank accounts, letters from the Reserve Bank of India to transfer money from abroad, or unclaimed sums of money left in the bank accounts of a foreign businessman.

In some instances, they even use false emblems of the RBI or photographs of the RBI Governor to lead the email recipients to conclude that their claims are genuine. “They are sending these mails to lakhs of people at one go. Even if one per cent of one lakh recipients respond, it would translate to 1,000 persons, and one crore of easy money for the conmen,” said a senior police official in the intelligence and CID department.