Every Nigerian citizen has had to carry the burden of hatred and suspision with which they are looked upon by other nationalities worldwide.
All because of the few bad eggs in their midst who have succeeded in creating a bad name for the whole country.
While most people think all Nigerians are involved in the scams in one way or the other, this is far from the truth.
Only a few bad eggs in the country are involved in the scams. In a country of over 120 million people, the people involved in the scams respresent just a tiny segment of the population.
Yet, their impact has been so devastatingly profound that most people now erroneously think all Nigerians are involved.
As far as many people are now concerned, "Nigerians are ordinary crooks".
But this statement and assumption is not only wrong but very frustrating to honest Nigerians all over the world.
In actual reality, Nigerians are also been targeted by these scammers in huge numbers.
Without mincing words, it is a fact that there are as many as thousands of cases of similar 'local' victims of the Nigerian scams among Nigerians daily.
The scams actually started in Nigeria among Nigerians before transcending the Nigerian borders with the proliferation of communication gadgets like the Internet.
Most of the scammers were previously targeting only Nigerians in the scams. There have been thousands of cases of Nigerians too who have lost entire fortunes to these similar scams.
A typical Nigerian version of the scam (against Nigerians) work as follows:
A man is working along the streets (or is in his office or home) and he gets approached by another one who first tries to establish a familiarity either by asking for directions to locate somebody or asking for something else.
After a certain bond has been established (usually within minutes), the stranger then informs the potential victim about a deal that involves getting some huge amount of money which will be shared equally among both parties.
The stranger explains to the potential victim how he came across such money- either his boss died and left the money in a secret place to which he alone knows, or he found some bad guys secretly hiding the money.
He goes further to explain with as many convincing words as possible that there is no risk involved for the potential victim. All he has to do is just to help him in claiming the money.
The idea (as is the case even with the one targeted against foreigners) is always to first build up the interest (always powered by greed) in the mind of the potential victim.
At this point, only one thing rings in the victims' minds- 'this is it- finally a way to get out of poverty'.
They don't take the time to ask the scammer certain pertinent questions, like- 'How can you suddenly present a total stranger like me with such an opportunity? Don't you know anyone else in the whole wide world except a total stranger like myself?'
They don't ask such questions mainly because of greed. They are happy to be presented with such opportunities and instantly want a piece of the action.
When the scammer has been able to build that interest in the mind of the Nigerian victim, he then goes further to present more evidence of the money by either taking the victims to see bags or cartons allegedly containing the money or a few thousands as being part of the money.
At this point the victim is so convinced that there is really a lot of money involved and he will soon become a millionaire within the twinkle of an eye.
Alas, this is where the scam begins...
The scammer then tells the victim that the whole money is either locked in a safe and will need money to buy a special key to unlock the safe or the money is secretly kept in a location that will need money to break into.
Note that the scammer has been able to get the interest of the victim completely and knows that the victim will do anything to get his hands on the money as much as possible.
The money to use in either unlocking the safe or breaking into the secret location is always huge. Most victims have been known to sell their belongings or emptied their savings to bring out money for the scammers.
Like the ones targeted against foreigners, the scammers always insist that the victim keep the deal to themselves and not to reveal it to any other person.
There are other variations against Nigerians where the victims will be shown many bags allegedly containing millions of dollars. The dollars are allegedly covered with a certain chemical and would require another kind of chemical to wash.
This is the variation that has led many Nigerians to their doom because the money demanded by the scammers in such cases is always huge.
They try to convince the victims that if they can bring a few millions to buy the chemicals needed to wash the money, they stand the chance of getting millions more.
And the victims get hooked in because of the fact that the money is in dollars. With the low value of the Nigerian currency against the dollar, a million dollars is well over a hundred million Nigerian naira.
Hundreds of thousands of Nigerian millionaires and big business men in Nigeria have been known to lose entire fortunes to such scams...
Hundreds of thousands of Nigerian housewifes have been known to lose their money and those of their husbands to such scams erroneously believing that they would get millions more at the end of the day...
Hundreds of thousands of Nigerian students and youths have been known to steal and sell their parents properties to raise money to give to the scammers...
Hundreds of thousands of Nigerian workers have been known to defraud their companies to fork out money to give to the scammers...
Hundreds of thousands of Nigerian religious leaders have been known to use church money to give to scammers...
In all, hundreds of thousands of Nigerians have seriously suffered in the past and are still presently suffering in the hands of these Nigerian scammers.
I will be very correct if I say that there has been as many as 1 million victims of the scams in Nigeria alone.
Like I have said elsewhere NO ONE IS SPARRED FROM FALLING FOR THE NIGERIAN SCAMMERS.
No one, not even Nigerians themselves.
The scammers don't care about anyone. There have even been cases in Nigeria where some scammers have scammed even their relatives and close associates.
So, it is not a matter of Nigerians scamming foreigners specifically.
It is a matter of scammers scamming everyone.
Now, other people from other countries in Africa, Europe, Asia and even America have copied the techniques and strategies of the scams and are now localizing it and scamming people in large numbers.
As far as I am concerned if something is not done as soon as possible to mass inform as many people worldwide as possible, I envisage a situation where the scams will be translated in other foreign languages to defraud unsuspecting foreigners.
The scammers can simply operate in, say China, using Chinese language, location, etc. The Chinese victims would simply think they are helping a fellow Chinese to move huge sums of money out of an unsecure location to a secure location... without realising that the intent is to defraud them.
Even against the Nigerians, the Nigerian scammers are also using the Internet and its paraphernalia.
Thousands of Nigerians have received and fallen victims for email variations of similar scams where they receive emails from scammers (operating as foreign nationals) asking for their help in moving chunks of money out of their countries (to the victim's account here in Nigeria).
The Nigerian scammers target Nigerians by claiming to be from other neighboring parts of Africa like South Africa, Uganda, etc, especially the countries where there are certain problems like war, prosecution, etc.
The trick is similar. They want to move the huge sums of money to the account of the Nigerians... and in return the Nigerians would get a certain percentage of the money.
I will help you travel to the West
Another variation being used by the Nigerian scammers against Nigerians is the one that promises to help the Nigerian victims to travel to the West (Europe or America).
The potential Nigerian victim receives an email (especially those Nigerians and Africans who visit and post their details in friendship websites) from a foreigner (mostly Americans or Europeans) who is interested in making friends with the Nigerian.
The foreigner can be a male or female depending on the sex of the potential Nigerian victim.
The foreigner would first create the bond between both of them by claiming to fall in love with the Nigerian or African.
When such closeness has been created the foreigner would then present an opportunity to the victim where the victim can travel to the West to meet and marry the foreigner.
This is when the scam starts.
The foreigner would inform the victim of a group that helps people to travel to the West through conferences. He or she would then give the victim the email address (or website) of the group so that the victim can find out more information from the group.
The trick here is that the foreigner is a Nigerian scammer and the so called group are also involved in the scam.
When the victim contacts the group, the group would provide convincing evidence of genuinenes to the victim and demand certain amount of money to facilitate the moves.
The group would also convince the victim that he or she needs to bring at least 10 other people who would go for the conference.
Each of these people would have to pay a certain amount of money for making the trip.
In many cases, the foreigner would 'pay' half of the money for the victim to convince the victim of his or her commitment to the moves.
In a nutshell, the victim convinces others to pay the money and after that he hears nothing again from neither the foreigner nor from the group.
The victim now has to contend with repaying the other people for their money which is usually in thousands of dollars.
There have been thousands of such cases in the past and more are still going on daily.
As more Nigerians and Africans embrace the Internet, more and more of them get scammed.
Everyday newer variations come up to scam as many Nigerians and Africans as possible.
The bottom line is that the scammers are not particular about scamming only Westerners. They scam anyone anywhere anytime worth scamming.
Like I have said elsewhere... NO ONE IS SPARRED, NOT EVEN NIGERIANS THEMSELVES!
