By Will Sturgeon, 5 April 2004 16:20
NEWS A Nigerian conman who tricked people into handing over money and personal data in expectation of receiving a huge windfall has been sentenced to 20 months in prison by a Welsh court.
Peter Okoeguale, 33, who was arrested in Wales while is the process of committing one such '419' scam, also faces deportation from the UK at the end of his sentence.
When arrested, Okoeguale was found in possession of headed notepapers and forged documents, all created for the purposes of duping gullible victims and making them believe he was a in charge of a large fortune which needed to be laundered through a Western bank account.
In sentencing, Judge John Rogers QC said: "You had in your possession a substantial amount of equipment and carefully drafted fraudulent documents with the intention that they should be used to fool gullible people."
Handing out the custodial sentence Rogers said "only a period of imprisonment is appropriate" for a crime which amounted to "international fraud".
Police investigating the case have tracked down 11 victims of Okoeguale. One individual in Scotland lost £20,000 to the scam, according to police.
Although sympathy is often thin on the ground for victims of the scam, who fall foul to their own greed and gullibility, the National Criminal Intelligence Service says the organised crime rings behind them still need to be cracked because the money raised by perpetrating such frauds often funds far more serious criminal activity such as the trafficking of drugs and people.
At the time of his arrest Okoeguale was based in Ireland where he was living with his wife and children.
Comments
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1. anonymous
Nigerian '419' scammer sent to prison by Will Sturgeon
Hello ;
I get similar Email from Lagos or said to be Lagos or some where in or around Nigeria saying similar things like they are the Widow or Son or Daughter of some DEAD Powerfull person and they have Millions of their Money and they need a USA Partner , etc etc .
This type of Email comes to me every 2 weeks or once a month and I reply ,, telling them where to go and how to get there using very bad Profanity . (:o)
2. Martin
Bad move, by replying your just confirming your e-mail address as live and inviting more spam/scam through your mail box. Best thing to do with these is foward them to abuse@domainname.*** as most isp's won't like people using their service for sending out scams.
3. tis me
Two points:
When I answered a 419 some 3 years ago with "your a naughty boy, your gonna go to prison".......within 2 hours my mail box received 1000 scam mails, and I ended up having to change my box.
secondly:
Who pays to keep his wife and kids whilst he's in jail? If he makes his living this way then presumably all his money is illegal....I bet he took every "hand out" in the book
4. Ayo George
I am British of Nigerian parentage. I have worked hard all my life, my parents also worked hard and honestly.
Anyone responding to an email promising millions of pounds or dollars for no work done should also be prosecuted for conspiracy to defraud.
It is obvious that if such funds did exist it was stolen anyway.
Above all most Nigerians are honest decent hard working people. Well I am anyway
5. Dark Overlord
If you are stupid enough to reply to unsolicited e-mail and hand over £20,000 you deserve all that you get!
PS To the chap from Scotland, if you would like to send me your credit cards I'll send you a tenner!
6. anonymous
The domain name they're sent from is not the best one to report abuse to, necessarily. Go and read up on email spam tracking and how to dig headers... it's the source machine you need to report, and even then it may simply be a compromised box or relay.
7. anonymous
Any one stupid enough to be caught is a willing accomplice in what they think is an illegal scam to avoid exchange control/ launder money/ defraud a third party and they deserve all that they get.... er... lose.
No, sorry, I take that back. I heard of one idiot, visiting Nigeria about 15 years ago, who got himself shot dead when he tried to back out of a very major scam. I guess he must have threatened to reveal all. He didn't deserve to lose his life.
8. Dean Hilton
I resent the deployment of scarce police resources to these cases. The "victims" deserve to suffer the consequences of their greed and dishonesty.
9. Warren Edwardes
The Nigerian 419 scammer should not have sent to prison.
He was defrauding people who were willing to partake in and launder allegedly stolen money.
He should have been rewarded and hired by the Inland Revenue or Customs. The sort of main chance petty crooks who respond to his emails are also the sort of people who fiddle their taxes and don't pay parking fines.
10. rik
I consider myself a victim of this persons actions, because of his messages and others like it I have been forced to invest in spam filtering technology.
There's what 1 billion computers around the world if only half of these was to spend $20 on spam filtering software (and I myself have had to spend a lot more than that over the years) that's $10billion his and ilk's actions have cost victims globally.
It's about time spamming carried the death penalty.
11. Bob Parker
I'm with you, Rik!
Thanks to greedy sleazy unemployably-dishonest lazy mostly American spammers, one of my e-mail accounts gets over 300 spams per day and is now useless.
Now I'm finding that e-mails both from and to me are vanishing in transmission, no doubt due to spam filters being tightened to the point where a substantial number of genuine e-mails are being deleted.
Death penalty for sleazy good-for-nothing greedy brain-dead spammers? Certainly!
12. Amirchook
Good!
Some scammers get too lucky for too long and I aint talking about Gitz!
13. Mumtaz A. Memon
Good job done and well done by both the team who investigated and brought the scammer to the trial court and by the Judge by awarding him the sentence though a light one.This type of scams are on and on every where so the law enforcing agencies need to be more vigilant and this could be done when people are educated to bring forward the info, which smells fraud,to the authorities for investigation nad action.
14. GA
I have no sympathy for the "victims" of these scammers. They are dishonest, greedy people that deserve to loose their money. They are willingly partaking in illegal money laundering, such as trying to “help” to get the looting of General Sani Abacha away form the poor people of Nigeria where the money belongs, to the west and pocket a good portion of it themselves. Use limited police recourses to do something else, these idiots deserve to loose every penny the scammers manage to fraud out of their pocket.
15. Nick
419 Scams are nothing new, I first came across it via an airmail I received some 10yrs ago.
I took it to the police who laughed at me. They did eventually fax it off to Scotland yard and with in seconds of it being sent the phone was tinkling in the station.
I gave all my details and a few months later heard that it had along with other information led to a prosecution.
As for sending the scammers a reply geting loads of spam is the least of your worries.
I once did this in a pique of annoyance and the mail address I used was hijacked and used as the originating address for spamers.
Forutnately it was only a temporary address so it was just closed.
However before I did I was getting thousands of bounce emails as a result of the spammers activities.
These people are the scum of the earth
16. Patrick Dobratz
I feel bad for people that actually need to con people out of money, and I feel that people should actually learn how to work for there money.
17. anonymous
No need for the death penalty. It is too expensive and too final. I propose hard labor. Lots of large rocks and a small hammer and your meal size is proportional to your production.
18. anonymous
The 419 scam has however come of age, and people are wising up. The 419 scammers are now scanning Ebay and other "for sale" adverts, are e-mailing sellers and paying from Nigeria with hijacked pay-pal accounts. Other times they will send cheques that are to bounce.
They will usually ask to buy the item, and offer a stupidly high price for it, with an equally stupidly high price for shipping.
Beware! Do not ship any goods until payment has been effected.
19. badbobmcbad
People who respond to scams are stupid, plain and simple.
People who pay for spam filtering are too stupid to discover open source software.
20. Gordon Maudsley
And it's not just total idiots that get scammed by these people. My wife and I were on holidays staying at a nice hotel in Sussex (about a year ago) and got quite friendly with the owner of the hotel. On our last night there, he quite proudly (and secretly) told me of this "guy" who needed help getting money out of some third world country and had contacted him. "I'm going to make millions from this" he said.
"No your not, it's a scam", I replied.
"Rubbish, it's genuine", he retorted.
"Really? Good luck then", I said as I wondered where they would put the 'For Sale' sign on the hotel when he'd shelled out tens of thousands to this "guy"....
21. Mr 419
I am a Scammer or what you call 419ner. I am probably more educated that most of you all as I have two post graduate degrees. What you guys out there should ask yourselves is what is the reasons why the average Nigerian will get involve in 419. The truth of the matter is that 80% percent of Nigerians are unemployed! In which case one must find other means to survive! Give me a job today in your country and see if I will not be the best employee! 419 is happening all over the world. George Bush and Tony Blair played the world 419 but invading Iraq 'under false pretence' which is the criminal code meaning of 419. Our local political leaders in Nigeria are also playing us 419. If not why will our president Olusegun Obasanjo fustrate our National airline, Nigeria Airways not to fly and then handing it on a plater of Gold to Richard branson of Virgin atlantic airways which was Nigeria airways main compitition for nothing? It is obviously because the Nigerian president or someone close to him is probably getting 10% commission on every virgin atlantic ticket bought!! Thereby playing Nigerians 419 since they have to pay more for air travel!! When colonialist came to Africa and took africans as slaves to europe and the americas for slavery, what was that? 419!!!
The truth of the matter is that if things were better, Nigerians are the hardest and inovative people. find out more.
22. Andrew Lewis
"Mr 419" claims that with two post grad degrees that he is "more" educated than most of us mere mortal silicon.com readers! I think there is as much truth in his statement over his education as there is in a 419 scam!
Mr 419, your spelling, grammar and punctuation are pretty atrocious. Even the point you are trying to make is fairly incomprehensive.
Please do everyone a favour; stop scamming and go back to school. If you study hard, then maybe you will get a real job in the end. All you and other 419ners have achieved in the meantime is to alienate Nigeria from the rest of the world.
With any luck you will be caught and go to prison. You could then put your two post grad degrees to good use defending yourself in court?!
The vast majority of Nigerians are decent harworking people and they don't need people like you to act as their PR consultant!