Australian woman turns table against Nigerian internet scammers

Posted by admin Africa & World Politics, Headlines Thursday, February 23rd, 2012

An Australian woman, Sarah Jane Cochrane-Ramsey has outsmarted some
Nigerian internet conmen who specialize in dangling phony contracts to their
victims. She turned the table against a group of con artists to the tune of
$30,000

The Courier-Mail reports that Sarah Jane Cochrane-Ramsey, 23, was
employed as an “agent” in March 2010 by the Nigerians, but didn’t know they
were scam artists. Her “job” was to provide access to an Australian bank
account opened in her name where the Nigerians could then transfer money
they had received from a phony car sales website. Cochrane-Ramsey was
told she could keep eight percent of the transfers.

But, then she decided to steal from the thieves themselves. According to the
Courier-Mail, she received two payments, totaling $33,350, but spent most of
it on herself.

If you’re not familiar with the so-called Nigerian Scam, also known as the
(419) scam, or Advanced Fee Fraud, here’s a brief explainer: the fraud works
by convincing an individual to give money and/or bank account access to a
third-party in exchange for future financial rewards.

Most commonly, the scam artist will claim to be a wealthy Nigerian individual
looking to move his vast financial resources to another country. He then
promises the fraud victim a hefty payment in exchange for a temporary loan
or bank account access in order to facilitate the move. Of course, the fraud
victim never receives the promised payout and instead usually ends up losing
thousands of dollars in the process. According to Scam Busters, the
Advance Fee Fraud scams often target small businesses and charities. And
while the scam has been around for years, the U.S. Financial Crimes Division
of the Secret Service still receives a reported 100 calls a day from people
claiming to be victims of a (419) crime.

But, back to the Cochrane-Ramsey case. The real victims who thought they
were buying cars online reported the scam to the police, who traced the
account back to Cochrane-Ramsey. She was ordered to appear in Brisbane
District Court and plead guilty to one count of aggravated fraud.

For now, the court judge is allowing Cochrane-Ramsey time to come up with
the money to pay off the fraud victims while she awaits sentencing in March.

Interestingly, Cochrane-Ramsey is not the first person to turn the tables on
Nigerian scammers. In 2008, the radio program This American Life ran a
story on some anonymous pranksters who sent a Nigerian scam artist on a
wild goose chase that spanned 1,400-miles into war-torn Chad for a promised
cash payout at a local Western Union branch.

And they convinced him to do this while carrying an anti-Muslim/pro-George
W. Bush note, which stated his intention to rob the Western Unionwp_posts