Israeli (419) Advance Fraudsters Pretend They Are Nigerians
It is increasingly clear that the identity of Nigerians have been hijacked by international criminal mafias in order to perpetrate their evil schemes undetected.
Some of the main culprits of this international fraud who abuse the name of Nigeria and Nigerians in their nefarious plots are actually Israelis based in Israel.
According to news reports the Tel Aviv police fraud squad busted a team of nine Israelis (probably of East European descent) who had defrauded U.S. senior citizens and pensioners of millions of dollars under the cover of a so-called Nigerian scam. The spunky criminals even had a posh office right in the downtown area of Tel Aviv.
Modus Operandi
The defendants, all in their 20s and 30s, would phone American pensioners or contact them by e-mail notices. They would then inform the Americans that they had won the lottery and ask them for a fee of several thousand dollars for the transfer of the prize money.
The victim is then persuaded into making pre-transfer payments to the Israeli con-artists, who would eventually disappear off the line with the entire payment once they would have bilked enough money from the hapless victims.
Recently, it was reported that the American agencies had urged Israel Police to step up law enforcement and take measures to stem what has become an epidemic of fraud coming from Israel targeted against U.S. citizens and often garbed to appear like it were a scam attempt from Nigeria.
At the time of reporting, it was also disclosed that the U.S. police has been prodding their Israeli counterparts to speed up the extradition procedure of another ten Israelis who were suspected of scamming $2 million in similar operation. Most of the ten defendants in the advance-fee scam are in their early twenties, without a criminal record.
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1097901.html