It all started with a mail from George Ndu, who claimed that he was the accountant with the Federal ministry of works and housing in Nigeria.

"I am mandated by a senior colleague to seek and solicit the assistance of a trustworthy person outside the shores of my country to enable us claim a long lying funds amounting to $15.5 million (fifteen million five hundred thousand US dollars).

These funds originated from contracts we awarded and supervised for the ministry on behalf of the Federal government," the mail said.

According to Ndu, these contracts had already been executed and payments had been made.

The benevolent contractors who executed these contracts, however, left behind $15.5 million as an over-invoiced amount for committee members to share amongst themselves.

The mail also claimed that the said monies were already earmarked for payment via an offshore payment office but this had been pending due to lack of relevant papers and officials to back the claim. "In view of this, my colleague has mandated me to look for a foreign partner abroad who will receive the money on our behalf, since, as civil servants—with restrictions on financial matters—we cannot put up claims for the money in our names, neither are we allowed to own or operate foreign accounts," the mail said. Ndu also promised 25% of the total amount as commission to the "partner" for ‘lending’ them his bank account.

If this sounds familiar, it certainly is. Such mails must have reached you, and if you’re sensible, or lucky, or suspicious, you’ve ignored or deleted them, wondering who could be naïve enough to fall prey to hoaxes. But across the world, and now in India, people continue to buy the story—daily.

A quick survey across our own office revealed that as many as 65% of all staffers have been receiving similar mails on a regular basis. The statistics are alarming and raise many questions. Who on the earth has the time to send such mails to so many people, and do they really mean business? How many foreign businessmen, royals, dictators, opposition party members die in Nigeria annually and how many government contracts are over-billed? Above all, has anybody really managed to help these ‘distressed souls’ or ‘lucky officials’—and got their booty?

While I was drafting a reply to the mail, our reporter from Chennai flashed a message that she was filing a report on the Nigeria 419 scheme (or the "advance fee fraud" [AFF]). She was also in touch with someone negotiating with—and tracking—them. Soon, this author got on the line with ‘Jai’—M Jayashankar—CEO of Chennai-based Caliber Plus, and we began working together, investigating the scam that seemed to have found its way to Indian shores. To begin with, we decided to continue negotiating with the scamsters through Jai, tracking them using their contact details.

As for who we were after, it was Peter Esemusa, who claimed to be the chairman of the ‘Contract Award Committee’ for Nigeria’s Petroleum Trust Fund. Jai was already in touch with him on his phone [#234-803-7145080] in Nigeria. Peter wanted Jai to come either to Nigeria or the Netherlands to sign the agreement. Jai refused. Soon after the refusal, we received a mail from Bode Thomas, supposedly the head of the Foreign Payment Department in Nigeria from his personal account—bthomas_bank@yahoo.com. We smelt this one out for what it was—a common scamster trick—claiming that mails from their official IDs had been bouncing.

"Pursuant to your fund release order and our mutual phone conversations on the above subject matter, be informed that the audit unit has completed verifications, reconciliation and re-validation of your project file: FGN/PTF/PED/WR-KD/2002, the foreign exchange allocation to the tune of $15,000,000 granted to be remitted without deduction in your favor. Therefore, it is expedient as the bona fide beneficiary to pay the mandatory signing fees, bank legal cost, and High Court charges of affidavit-notarization, stamp duty and registration of the affidavit in order for it to be valid. The amount required is $5,750.89 (US Dollars Five Thousand Seven Hundred and Fifty Eighty-Nine Cents only)," Thomas wrote in. The amount was supposed to be deposited in favor of Audit Co Ltd in their account with the Hua Nan Commercial Bank in Taipei, Taiwan.

This was a vital lead and we started working using the same technology—e-mail and chat, among others—that had helped the 419-ers realize their business across the globe. Investigations and interaction with people in Taiwan in Yahoo! chat rooms led us to others in India, China and Pakistan—all either in the negotiations or already having coughed up the upfront fee. The chat sessions also helped us compile a list of 38 active accounts that scamsters were using... Next step, we set about gathering information on the many fronts being used by them.

419—and its many faces
Our investigation revealed that many of those behind the racket were using banking facilities in Hong Kong to run their ‘business’ seamlessly. The modus operandi was simple—while "funds in Nigeria" remained the primary bait, the objective was to deal through fronts based in Hong Kong, the USA and the UK. The so-called ‘iron hand’ image of these countries was being used to make the victims believe that it could be a real offer after all. Further probes revealed seven such fronts (there could be more, of course)—Origin Merchant Bank (www.originmerbank.com), Banquedenationale Bank (www.banqedenationale.com), Global Banking Corp (www.globalbankingcorp.com), Citi Express Banks Inc (www.citiexpressbank.com), Swiss Corps Inc (www.swisscorps.com), Eurocentral Union (http://eurocentralunion.com) and Transglobe express Co—specifically created for this purpose.

In most cases that we looked into, victims were asked to deposit money in favor of either of these companies in a ‘corresponding bank’.

Knowing that we had as much of a social obligation as a journalistic one, we contacted the Indian authorities and monitoring agencies, as well as forieign victims. Subsequently, the Hong Kong Monetary Authority issued a press release on June 19, 2003 warning people against any dealings with Banquedenationale Bank.

"The public should be aware that Banquedenationale Bank is not authorized under the Banking Ordinance to carry on banking business or the business of taking deposits in Hong Kong, nor does it have a representative office in Hong Kong. The address of its Hong Kong office stated in the website is incomplete and cannot be traced. The HKMA has verified with relevant US financial authorities that Banquedenationale Bank does not have a banking license in the US, nor does the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation of the US insure it. Moreover, the UK financial regulator has confirmed that Banquedenationale Bank is not authorized to carry on the regulated activities of accepting deposits in the UK," the press release said [www.info.gov.hk/hkma/eng/press/2003/20030619e3_index.htm].

HKMA also referred the website to the Hong Kong Police Force for further investigations. It has since been liaising with financial authorities in the US and UK to take appropriate action in cases related to the website.

Our investigations also show that the perpetrators were transferring money from one of their current accounts in a leading bank in Hong Kong to a savings account in the same bank. Information from the sources revels that a total of HK $7.3 million [or Rs 4.3 crore] was withdrawn from the bank using different modes—cash withdrawals using ATM and electronic transfer, all this in less that ten months between August 2002 and June 2003.

Going by the average transaction amounts for all seven fronts, it is estimated that this one group has managed to wangle people out of nearly Rs 30 crore in a year’s time.

So who paid all this money?
Not many Indians whom we managed to speak with were forthcoming about their negotiations—or their losses. Some turned hostile and threatened us with dire consequences when we tried to alert them about the nature of the scam. Nevertheless, we managed to gather information about several negotiations and trace a case where an Indian had actually lost money.

This Mumbai-based businessman admitted that he had paid up Rs 232,095 ($4,987) and shot a question right back to us—Why had we not alerted him before he sent the amount. Another Indian who was in negotiations with the scamsters—an ex-armyman from Patiala—said he wasn’t convinced about the offer, or the credentials of the the people he was dealing with.

Tracing the ‘419’ Scamsters

In Chennai, 29-year-old M Jayshankar got a similar ‘spam scam’ mail on May 30 this year, and has since been working nearly full-time to unravel the mystery of the decade-old scam. One of the first things he did was to send a mail about the scam to many who mattered in India. What made it relatively quick to expose this scam was the 29-year-old aeronautical engineer’s ability to traverse the Internet, moving from server to server—whether they were running Windows, Mac, Unix, Linux or Sun Solaris—as also his expertise in networking and IT security. Our story would have been very difficult without his work—and it’s unlikely that we would have tracked the imposters and their victims. Says Jayshankar: "I haven’t invented anything new, but I’ve managed to find many security holes in present-day computer networking, which lets me capture and control a distant computer." These were also the skills that helped us get contact details of some of the victims who gave us vital clues that helped unravel the mystery of the scam, which the FBI believes is a thriving multi-billion-dollar business... and helped us alert those victims, and various police forces and agencies. Jayshankar runs Caliber Plus (www.CaliberPlus.com), a company that sells domain names, with features like free e-mail, free hosting space and free e-mail forwarding—"the cheapest domain name registrar in the country". Next in line—a jobs site for India, BrainBankIndia.com, with online job interviews.

But there were others, who, despite their doubts, were still negotiating. What was disquieting was the fact that the racket—given its e-nature—has not been restricted to metro and bigger cities only. The list includes a small-time film producer from Sahibabad in Uttar Pradesh, another working in a Bangalore-based animation company, businessmen in Mumbai and Rohtak, plus another working class person in Nowshehra, Srinagar.

And there are hordes of others across the globe willing to listed—and perhaps fall for the scam. Some pleaded with us to help get back their money. A lady from China disclosed to us that she had sent $131,016 to one of the accounts, while a gentleman from Kagawa, Japan had sent $15,040. Another victim, Shaari Mohammad, had already paid a stamp duty of $3,200, and a further $1,100 as endorsement charges. All of them said they had decided not to send any more money. The lady in China has since reported the matter to the local police and unconfirmed reports from sources suggest that the HKMA action might have been the outcome of this.

Meanwhile, we have handed over the findings of our investigation to the investigation and law-enforcement agencies in India, who have also contacted their international and foreign counterparts. Watch this space for further developments.

SHUBHENDU PARTH Inputs from Nisha Kurien