Epilogue

While we had fun with Omar don't ever forget that these are most dangerous people who are incapable of feeling empathy for their fellow human beings. They have some of the trappings of modern civilization but, beneath that thin veneer, beats the heart of a savage.

I've since found out it took Omar four months to get back home. Penniless, living on sidewalks with old newspapers for shelter, he walked back to Gabon via Equatorial Africa. Equatorial Africa is at the bottom of the list for African nations making Sudan and Somalia appear as paradise by comparison.

Came across this posting on the Quatloos.com forum.

It doesn't make pleasant reading.

My father was murdered in Port Harcourt on 18th July, 2003. He was poisoned with Arsenic and took 2 days to die. His organs died first and then his blood leached out of his blood vessels - he died from hypotension or basically, low blood pressure.

I flew over to pick up his remains from Australia. I flew for 41 hours in 4 days and wound up crushing up his bones in a hotel room with our Consul in Lagos. The crematoriums over there are very primitive, accounting for the "ashes" being only 25% ash and 75% bone. They were given to me in a giant "pickle" jar - as I wanted to save my family further angst I had no other option than to decant his remains into soemthing more appropriate.

I am presently being treated for Post Traumatic Stress Disorder as a function of this experience.

I know this scam thing is really a bit of a joke. My father saw it that way too, so he went there to retrieve money. However, I don't see it that way anymore.

Having paid a ransom for my father's body and negotiated my way through getting death certificates (try doing that in Nigeria and you'll get a redefinition of the word "scam"!) and dealing with them face -to-face I'm of the firm belief these people are pathologically twisted. You can't even make eye contact with them - if you do it's an in.

I wouldn't want my worst enemy to have to go through what I did.

This whole thing should be taken far more seriously. But it's not - the news didn't pick it up, probably because Jennifer Aniston passed wind that day. I'm appalled - truly appalled by authorities who should be warning people about this far more vocally. The consequences are horrific - loss of money is nothing compared to loss of life.

The thing is they don't have "law" over there so the people who killed my father and dyed his hair to hide the eivdence will never be found, nor prosecuted - even the mortician was paid off to start the embalming process on the body before the autopsy so as to destroy evidence! In the meantime the murderers were on the phone to me trying to extort payment for my father's passport and diary.

There's the quid pro quo for these stupid scams - they're dangerous.

Elizabeth

How does the typical Nigerian view a westerner? As easy sheep to slaughter.

From the online forum "Nigeria World" let's ask the Nigerians themselves.

From a thread titled "419 Superstars" Galileo writes:

Over the last week or so, I've been going over various 419 correspondences posted on www.scamorama.com, an anti-scam site dedicated to those who bait scammers, or 419ers. The letters all have the same twang-appalling grammar, all caps, and extreme stupidity on the part of the scammer. You can just imagine a scam-baiter referring to a sammer as his 'boneheaded son' and the fellow replying as such, referring to himself as 'your boneheaded son'.

Not too long ago, a friend on a recent trip to Lagos had to walk out of an Internet cafe in disgust, on discovering that everyone around him was dilligently engaged in sending and reading scam correspondence, and most of the takers were tenage boys and girls. For Nigerians in the West, being a Nigerian is more or less becoming a traumatic experience, as nobody seems to take us seriously anymore. Just travel through Europe on a Nigerian passport, and you'll understand better exactly what I mean.

I know a good number of us regard this 419 thing as tough luck on the part of the scammed(they are Europeans/Americans/ETC and therefore should know better), and so on, but we all have to face the consequences of the actions of our people. The government seems to have started working on this, with the EFCC, but what are we as individuals doing to nail these scoundrels? Looks to me like virtually every idle youth in Lagos today is a prospective scammer. How can we engage their time more productively, so they can stop damaging our image overseas?

Any suggestions out there?

I have one, rip all computers out of Nigeria. How dare an entire nation view others who live by the rule of law as foolish people!

Next user "sylva" makes this observation:

Nigerians in Nigeria or in diaspora should not be rendered culpable by foreigners on the "419" issue, it exists in every country. The only difference is that some people have decided to use Nigeria as scapegoats, without any justifiable evidence.

It is exactly the same thing as propagating that some Nations in Nigeria, especially in the Niger delta are massacring themselves without telling us what the reasons were/are. Or the massacre of a village in Congo so that they would accuse their neighbours.

Most of the possible scam cannot be carried out, especially outside Nigeria without the collaboration of the citizens or residents of that country. We have discussed the issue of "419" many times on this board. All I can tell the new members or even the older ones is to bring the story of each scam so that we analyse them and see what roles Nigerians can or cannot play.

As concerns an email, most of them bear nothing to hide. But in most cases, it is possible to either intercept an email or make a keep of it for future actions.

But it is not the job of cybercafe operators but specialists selected for that job, bearing in mind that new inventions enable scammers to do today what was impossible yesterday. So, there is need for folllowing up the trends. It is just like viruses.

Some people have tried some software to analyse and detect the contents of emails. For example, if Nigerians have access to emails from there homes as in developed countries, the ISP or telecommunication companies can use software to detect words like "419", "money laundering", "Al-Qaida", or what have you.

The above method, though efficient, does not seem to work because some emails have been intercepted or return for no just cause.

Hate to tell you good buddie but you are full of it.