Lads busted in Spain.

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Hello I'm New here! Joined: 05 Aug 2007 Posts: 13

file this under "It's about time."

Spanish police have arrested 87 Nigerians suspected of defrauding at least 1,500 people in a postal and internet lottery scam.

The arrests were made in and around Madrid in an operation co-ordinated with the FBI.

Police said millions of euros were taken from the victims, most of them in the United States and European Union.

Those targeted were wrongly told they had won a lottery and asked to send a payment before prize money could sent.

Thousands of letters and e-mails, most in ungrammatical English, were sent out to prospective victims every day, police said.

The faked documents asked them to make an initial payment of 900 euros ($1,400, �720) in taxes or administrative costs.

The scam is estimated to have netted around 20 million euros, but the actual sum could be many times that, say police.

Anglican bishop

Police said the number of those defrauded could run into many thousands, as most of them probably failed to report the crime out of embarrassment.

Police estimate that only one in 1,000 recipients of the letters needed to fall for the fraud for it to make a profit. An Anglican bishop was among those duped, according to Spanish officials.

The operation to track down the gang began in May 2007 when a huge number of identical letters destined for addresses in the US was discovered at Madrid's Barajas airport.

Police confiscated hundreds of computers, mobile phones and 60,000 letters in a raid on more than 30 homes and businesses.

Law enforcement officers also seized a suitcase full of fake $100 notes which they say was used to convince some victims who came to Spain in person to collect their "prize money".

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7353003.stm

Adamu's soulmate Joined: 23 Nov 2007 Posts: 337

Good - made my day hope they all get nice long jail terms

Posted: Thu Apr 17, 2008 5:37 pm

Glad to know someone's doing something.

Posted: Thu Apr 17, 2008 6:49 pm

cool its nice to see that some get caught Very Happy

Master of Master Baiters Joined: 27 Jan 2008 Posts: 589

Great news Twisted Evil

Baiting Guru Joined: 07 Jan 2007 Posts: 2922

It's 'Bubba' time. Twisted Evil

Master of Master Baiters Joined: 27 Jan 2008 Posts: 589

@Donato

Hello I'm New here! Joined: 05 Aug 2007 Posts: 13

I wish they would make the names of these lads public so that I could hire a plane to drop a metric tonne of leaflets over the capital with their names and crimes printed on them. Their village too if possible.

Posted: Thu Apr 17, 2008 7:38 pm

Seized their computers...hmm...I wonder how many 419 eaters emails are now being read by the police?

Hello I'm New here! Joined: 05 Aug 2007 Posts: 13

enough to give them a good laugh I hope.

Posted: Thu Apr 17, 2008 8:05 pm

That's excellent news. Twisted Evil

I just hope their families think to send them some "soap on a rope" or something.

Posted: Thu Apr 17, 2008 8:08 pm

Yeah!

Bravo to the Spanish LEOS!

Posted: Thu Apr 17, 2008 8:12 pm

Quote:

The scam is estimated to have netted around 20 million euros, but the actual sum could be many times that, say police.

Wow.

Posted: Thu Apr 17, 2008 8:15 pm

Devil_Doc wrote:

enough to give them a good laugh I hope.

The cops are going to need new monitors and keyboards after they read some of this stuff.

Posted: Thu Apr 17, 2008 8:18 pm

Quote:

I wonder how many 419 eaters emails are now being read by the police

Oh no, and I sent that nice young man a collection of pictures of me in the nude...

Posted: Fri Apr 18, 2008 12:22 am

I was wondering why I haven't heard from some of my lads this week.

Posted: Fri Apr 18, 2008 2:15 am

I've got a lad in Spain! Part of Dr R@ys outfit... with my trunk box, in Madrid. I was hoping to get him to sfari to Barcelona, but if he ends up en el carcel, creo que no hay mejor!

*** BANNED *** Joined: 10 Jan 2004 Posts: 3779

Good luck for long jail terms. Today two �45k wash-wash lads got away with probation here. Evil or Very Mad

Posted: Fri Apr 18, 2008 7:53 am

Hi all, I am a newbie that got scammed by a syndicate and it is so embarrassing that I could not even tell my wife... she would kill me!! I tried the police , but they laughed at me ass well. They told me that they cant catch these guys because they always hit a brick wall. By the way I am in South Africa and the criminals love it over here. More and more we see illegal people hopping over our borders and many are Nigerian.

This makes me feel so much better that some of these scammers gets caught, but then it also makes me kind of worried to see how many of them are involved. This means that if they do find your personal info they most probably have the contacts to physically harm you...

Thanks guys for doing a great job and I want to learn how to do baiting before I jump into this. Laughing

Not quite a Newb Joined: 14 Jul 2005 Posts: 41

I'm sorry that you were stolen from, Yudid, but I would encourage you not to be embarrassed. The lads use this sense of shame to their own advantage.

Posted: Fri Apr 18, 2008 9:39 am

Being scammed is nothing to be ashamed about. It means that you have a good heart. Some of the scammers are obvious, but many of them have been doing this for a long time, and know how to make themselves believable.

Although I can easily understand why you might not want to talk about it, I would encourage you to let other people know that the scams are out there, even if you don't mention your personal involvement. Anything you can do to educate other good, well-meaning people is a good thing.

It's nice to read news stories about people being arrested for this. If the police in all countries were as willing to do something about these crimes, I have to admit, I probably wouldn't be baiting.

Posted: Fri Apr 18, 2008 3:55 pm

Additional information from another news source:

Quote:

Police searched 39 addresses, seizing more than 60,000 letters ready to send. The fraud was profitable even if only one in 1,000 addressees fell for it.

Police launched the investigation in May 2007 on discovering the dispatch of large amounts of identical letters from Madrid. The swindlers found the addresses of their victims in data bases of easy access on the internet, police said.

Police sources described the scam as a new version of the 'Nigerian letters,' in which people pretending to be representatives of the Nigerian government or institutions asked for help in getting a large amount of money out of the country.

From the Ghana news media:

Quote:

The operation to track down the gang began in May 2007 when a huge number of identical letters destined for addresses in the US was discovered at Madrid 's Barajas airport.

Posted: Mon Apr 21, 2008 8:56 pm

From DailySpain.com - 17-04-2008

Quote:

Crackdown on fraud network,87 arrested

Spanish police have arrested 87 Nigerians suspected of defrauding at least 1,200 people of millions of euros, mostly in the United States and Europe, the interior ministry said Thursday.

The gang sent out thousands of emails and letters every day to potential victims, making them believe they had been selected among thousands of others to participate in a Spanish lottery.

It also told them that they had won a prize of thousands of euros, the ministry said in a statement.

Those people who responded received official-looking but faked documents asking them to pay administrative costs or taxes.

Around 1,200 people filed complaints over the scam. But there were others "who did not file complaints out of shame, and who could represent about 90 percent of the total," the statement said.

"So, we estimate that the total amount known to have been defrauded is 20 million euros (32 million dollars), but that could be only about 10 percent of the total."

It said officers searched around 30 homes and nine business premises in the operation, seizing some 200 computers, 100 mobile phones, more than 60,000 letters and many false documents.

Those arrested operated from Madrid and the surrounding areas. Police began investigating the network in May 2007.

Posted: Tue Apr 22, 2008 12:40 am

i hope the turds get more than is coming to them. fantastic news

Posted: Tue Apr 22, 2008 2:40 pm

Does anyone know if a foreign diplomat by the name of Chr1st0pher Da1avan was one of those arrested? I'm flying to Madrid in two weeks time to meet him... I hope he still has my money waiting!