Nigerian Spam

Johannesburg - Haleema Hamza in Libya, Salim Spencer in Burkina Faso and Professor Charles Soludo in Nigeria have, amongst themselves, a total of R262.8m to alleviate someone's Christmas. Also, David John in London is offering a profitable job.

These four have stepped up their activities this festive season and are from four foreign nationals unknown to each other share a passion for providing a memorable festive season to an interested South African resident. They are just a few of the many fraudsters operating their scams in South Africa.

The police's 2005 & 2006 annual report showed that the circulation of fraudulent letters, generally through the internet, relating to 419 scams had grown-up with a total of 16,169 cases were reported to the police in the 2005 & 2006 financial year, and 5,131 people were under arrest said Superintendent Ronnie Naidoo.

A 419 scam is a confidence trick in which, people or a person is persuaded to advance relatively small sums of money in the hope of realizing a larger gain and are invited to impersonate a beneficiary of an untaken estate. But police have warned the public to be vigilant as fraudsters become very energetic in the festive season.

People are told they have inherited money or are Hamza in Libya needs "a Muslim organization or a dedicated Muslim individual" to help her move a huge sum out of her country which was left "by her late husband who was an oil explorer in Libya and Kuwait before he died in 2000".

Spencer, "the secretary of the auditing department of the African Development Bank" in Burkina Faso wants to transfer R103.8m which was "abandoned by one of our foreign customers who died along with his entire family in Algeria's earthquake on 23 May 2003". This explanation is also offered by Soludo, "the honorable governor of the Nigerian Apex Bank". He wants to transfer R159m.

Another warning has been issued in high level for the increase in international credit card scams, which mainly involves restaurant staff, said chief executive of the South African Banking Information Centre, Gilbert Swarts. Waiters are used by syndicates to swipe customer’s cards through a skimming device. Already, 66 people, including waiters, have been arrested for the scam.