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Businesses Government United States

Justice Department Indicts 80 Individuals, Most in Nigeria, in a Massive Business Email Scam Bust (techcrunch.com) 41

Posted by msmash from the nigerian-princess,-found dept.
The Justice Department have indicted dozens of individuals accused of their involvement in a massive business email scam and money laundering scheme. From a report: Thom Mrozek, a spokesperson for the U.S. Attorneys Office for the Central District of California, confirmed more than a dozen individuals had been arrested during raids on Thursday -- mostly in the Los Angeles area. A total of 80 defendants are allegedly involved in the scheme. News of the early-morning raids were first reported by ABC7 in Los Angeles. The 145-page indictment, unsealed Thursday, said the 80 named individuals are charged with conspiracy to commit mail and bank fraud, as well as aggravated identity theft and money laundering. Most of the individuals alleged to be involved in the scheme are based in Nigeria, said the spokesperson. But it's not immediately known if the Nigerian nationals will be extradited to the U.S., however a treaty exists between the two nations making extraditions possible.
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Justice Department Indicts 80 Individuals, Most in Nigeria, in a Massive Business Email Scam Bust More

Justice Department Indicts 80 Individuals, Most in Nigeria, in a Massive Business Email Scam Bust

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  • Yeah, good luck prosecuting that one...

    • Re:Good Luck With That (Score:5, Insightful)

      by LostMyAccount ( 5587552 ) on Thursday August 22, 2019 @12:05PM (#59112806)

      I honestly think that choppering into Pakistan to capture Bin Laden was easier to plan and implement than capturing internet scammers in Lagos.

    • Re:Good Luck With That (Score:4, Funny)

      by DaMattster ( 977781 ) on Thursday August 22, 2019 @12:12PM (#59112834)
      Yeah, the likelihood of getting these Nigerian nationals extradited isn't really great. The best defense against these scammers is a beautiful offense. I like pretending to be a victim to waste as much of these asshole's time as possible. My last scambait lasted 6 months before the lad was on to me. His parting words were calling me a goat fucker.

      • Thank you sir, you wear that title with honor!

      • Most criminal doesn't see themselves as evil criminals.
        They may know they are breaking a law, but they feel justified in some way for doing it.
        I think this Simpsons Qoute best explains it.
        Bart: Uh, say, are you guys crooks?
        Fat Tony: Bart, um, is it wrong to steal a loaf of bread to feed your starving family?
        Bart: No.
        Fat Tony: Well, suppose you got a large starving family. Is it wrong to steal a truckload of bread to feed them?
        Bart: Uh uh.
        Fat Tony: And, what if your family don't like bread? They like...cigar

        • Recently I received a text message from a real estate agent. They knew my name, address and cell phone number. I asked how they got my cell numbers, and they said that there's a service that they used that does this. Evidently this company doesn't know or care how evil it is. So here:

          Their number is (251) 202-2222. The name of the company is Irby LLC. Their address is 503 Government St, Mobile, AL 36602, USA (google maps: here [google.com]) and they like to support your local or foreign black-market data-thieves

          • Is it wrong to sell houses? No
            To sell houses you need to advertise and reach out to people? Yes
            What is the best way to get peoples attention? Texting
            So I find a company who can sell me peoples numbers to text.

            Is it wrong to offer services to help business advertise? No
            To help people advertise you need to collect a list of people and their contact info.

            There are actually a lot of sources to get this stuff, and such a company may have bought the information from seemingly legit sources, who may have bought fr

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by jwhyche ( 6192 )

      It will be remarkable simple. The United States will produce a warrant with the name of the people on it to the Nigerian embassy. The Nigerian government will look at it and go round them up and present them on a silver platter with a apple shoved in their mouths.

      Why would they do this? Money. The United States has almost a half a billion dollars earmarked for Nigeria in 2020. Uncle Sam snaps his fingers, Nigeria jumps. I'm not saying this is a good thing, or a bad thing, just simply this is how e

  • Who did they capture? (Score:5, Funny)

    by fluffernutter ( 1411889 ) on Thursday August 22, 2019 @11:56AM (#59112780)
    Was one of them the prince with the serious money problem??

  • In related news... (Score:5, Funny)

    by mandark1967 ( 630856 ) on Thursday August 22, 2019 @12:03PM (#59112800) Homepage Journal
    It's reported the King has suffered a heart attack upon learning that the Nigerian line of succession was obliterated when 80 of the Princes were indicted today while simply trying to "spread the wealth". And now, the weather, with Skip Taylor...

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by sinij ( 911942 )

      I think the King got around a lot more than you think for a lot longer that should be possible, as the number of princes is in thousands. It was an industrial production line.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Nidi62 ( 1525137 )

        I think the King got around a lot more than you think for a lot longer that should be possible, as the number of princes is in thousands. It was an industrial production line.

        Supposedly the House of Saud has roughly 15,000 princes, although only about 2000 actually have any power. I think any male relative that is not the king is considered a prince.

    • Earlier this morning, 80 Nigerian Princes were tragically killed in a plane accident while being extradited to the United States to face fraud charges. Each of them has left behind their widowed wives who will each inherit their late husband's fortunes (each estimated to be worth 33 million USD) It is unclear what the widowed wives will do with their newly inherited fortunes, but will have to act with UTMOST URGENCY as they are all geriatric and suffer from incurable cancer. It is expected that a fortuna

  • Extradition for white-collar petty crimes. And social engineering ones at that. From an underdeveloped nation.

    That must really hurt their pride.

  • Investigate, locate, terminate
  • Otherwise, how do they expect to act on those indictments?

  • I mean where you can go to a web page and simply click off the countries you never, ever want to get traffic from.

    Yes, I realize this isn't really going to be that effective, but I can definitely see a time in the not too distant future where somebody is going to try to make a buck just null routing all of these crapsack countries.

    • Heh...
      Doesn't some fairly large amount of data go through networks in Countries a lot of people may not want to get traffic from?
      Nigeria, probably not, but there are a few large actors that I would think this is the case.

  • U.S. Justice Department's motto: Solving the 1990's Problems, Today!
  • Earlier this morning, 80 Nigerian Princes were tragically killed in a plane accident while being extradited to the United States to face fraud charges. Each of them has left behind their widowed wives who will each inherit their late husband's fortunes (each estimated to be worth 33 million USD) It is unclear what the widowed wives will do with their newly inherited fortunes, but will have to act with UTMOST URGENCY as they are all geriatric and suffer from incurable cancer.

    It is expected that a fortuna

  • They better not spend my yet-to-be-delivered $2 million on their lawyers. This is their problem, not mine.

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