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(Date Posted:05/14/2006 1:00 AM)
http://www.citypaper.com/news/story.asp?id=7811I love this story! It made my day......From the article:Working with a team of Nigerian national law-enforcement agents he trained last September, an FBI agent recently arrested 16 people on fraud and theft charges in Lagos, Nigeria. The team also seized or prevented delivery of more than $400,000 worth of merchandise stolen from U.S. businesses through credit card fraud, according to Dale Miskell, supervisory special agent in charge of the FBI's Internet Fraud Complaint Center.Miskell is the FBI's man in charge of the "419 scam," a series of frauds perpetrated mostly over the Internet but also on the phone, using the Internet Protocol relay system meant for the deaf, speech-impaired, and hard of hearing ("Out of Africa," April 14).One of the suspects Miskell's team arrested was driving a late-model Mercedes-Benz. "They seized it because, why is this young kid driving this Benz when he's got fraudulent credit cards in his wallet?" Miskell says. "The kid said it was his dad's."All 16 of the suspects were jailed in Lagos to await their trials, Miskell says, though their status could not be determined by press time. None will be extradited to the United States.The operation marks the first time a U.S. law-enforcement officer went after West African Internet scammers directly. The scams--known as "419" fraud, after the number of the Nigerian law that forbids it--cost U.S. consumers and businesses hundreds of millions of dollars, much of it unreported. In 2002, 74 people reported losing $1.6 million in the most lucrative version of the scam, according to figures collected by the Internet Fraud Complaint Center.**more at link**
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I may be your operator, but I am NOT your bitch!
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