Is it easy to set up an European Bank account from Nigeria?

bookmark bookmark bookmark Saturday, January 19, 2008 12:00
Posted in category Lead Story, News

A day ago we posted in this site an article about a Nigerian scammer that was scammed by a guy called 419 Eater. Being a bit curious I wanted to find out a bit about 419 Eater and I found out from his website that he has managed to gather a lot of stories from people with a great sense of humor that managed quite creatively to scam Nigerian scammers.

I think the dictionary definition for people like 419 Eater is: scam-baiter The person who tries to humiliate and waste the time of Nigerian scammers!

Anyway, I read in particular about this Nigerian 419 scammer who was baited by user Shiver Metimbers into getting a tattoo!

church_logo

To cut the story short, the Nigerian, Mr Nicholas Okorie (doubt if its his real name) send the usual scam email where somebody want to transfer millions of dollars into your account. Shiver Metimbers replayed to him pretending to be Father Bruce Corbin (and also from Father Jack Hackett) the Holy Church of The Tattooed Saint!

Shiver Metimbers managed to persuade Mr. Okorie to get a real tattoo with the “churches” logo in order to get funding from the “church”

okorie5

When Mr. Okorie proved that he got the tattoo, a lot of emails went back and forth between the scammer and the scam-baiter about where and how to send the “church” money to Nigeria.

One of the accounts that Mr. Okorie produced was an account in a major Greek Bank (Piraeus Bank). This can be seen at the email quote below:

Dear father Jack Hackett,

I was not aware of the problems going on with the account number,as it belongs to an organisation in the BUREAU DE CHANGE buisness.Here in nigeria,most money transfers are done through this means as the WESTERN UNION MONEY TRANSFER seems ineffective considering the presence of the E.F.C.C.

I am so sorry about this.please do use this new acc.no.
PIRAEUS BANK
PAPASTRATOU BRANCH 2107
18545 PIREAS ATTICA GREECE
SWIFT CODE:PIRB GRAI 107
FAVOR:INTERCONTRACTS LTD
ACC/NO:GR8901721070 0051 0702 xxxx xxx

I do not know about Mr. Okorie’s other bank accounts (in Honk Kong), mentioned in the emails, and how he managed to open them.

The question that arises is how did Mr. Okorie, who resided in Nigeria (as seen from the email evidence), manage to open an account in a European Union Bank? The strict(?) E.U. regulations require the account holder to be residing at the country where the account is to open, including a residency/work visa.

Was Mr. Okorie acting alone or he managed to open accounts here and there with a help of a bigger scam/mafia network?

It seems from 419 Eater’s website that there have been many cases of scammers. Has the police (Interpol perhaps?) seen all this and tried to arrest any scammer? It will not be impossible to apprehend them as most scammers are tricked to send their pictures (found on 419 Eater’s website)

I think the “Nigerian” or 419 scam is a much more serious issue than what we know!

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