Gangs (21 page)

I apologise once more and say that I will give him a call as soon as Mr Thompson arrives, that we will collect the money first thing in the morning, meet him then and travel straight to the security company together.

Tao seems pleased by this suggestion and makes a note of the name and number of the hotel I tell him I’ll be staying at. We shake hands once more and I offer to pay his fee for parking his car at the airport. He declines with a big smile. ‘Do not concern yourself with this,’ he says. ‘We will soon be signing a deal that will make your boss a wealthy man.’

As Tao vanishes into the distance I breathe a sign of relief, turn and head back into the airport ready to catch the next flight home.

Safely back in London I track down the victim of a 419 scam who also travelled to Amsterdam and, unaware of the potential danger, took things one stage further than I was willing to. A successful businessman, but still embarrassed by his gullibility, Noah speaks only on condition that I agree not to identify him fully.

‘It went on for about three months in the end. I started off being incredibly sceptical about the whole thing, just going along with it to see what happened, but then when the documents started arriving, they all looked so real that I started to believe it.

‘I knew vaguely that there were some scams going around but the thing that struck me about this guy was that he never asked me for any money, not a penny. He just wanted me to go to Amsterdam and sign some papers, and then he was going to give me around six million dollars. Eventually I agreed.

‘The man, he called himself Ade, said he was going to pick me up at the airport but there was no one waiting for me. I called the number he had given me and he apologised, said he was busy and that I should take a taxi to a hotel. Three hours later I opened the door of my room to find a tall and very well-dressed black man with another black guy, who told me that he was a chemist.

‘Ade gave me a big hug, he seemed genuinely pleased to see me. His first email had told me all about his family troubles back in Nigeria and he kept telling me how grateful he was that I was going to be able to help, that I was “saving the lives of many people” by allowing him to get hold of the money.

‘He explained that for the release of the funds the security company wanted thirty-eight thousand dollars and although he was only able to collect thirty-five thousand he said he had made an agreement with the company whereby they would bring one of the two trunk boxes, which contained twenty-four million dollars, and we would pay them the remaining three thousand directly from the funds. That seemed a perfect idea to me and, again, because it cost me nothing, made me feel completely at ease.

‘He gave the chemist an envelope with the thirty-five thousand in it and told him to go to the security company for the release of the consignment. Ade and I stayed in the hotel room, waiting for the chemist to come back, and started talking about our families, religion, about his life back in Nigeria and the kind of things we planned to do once we had the money. He was good company and very easy-going. He had me convinced he was a good man, someone that I could trust.

‘After around an hour and a half, the chemist came back with another man who was carrying a large silver trunk and was introduced as a representative of the security company. Ade told this man that I was to be the beneficiary. He asked me to show him my passport, which I did, and then took some papers out of his briefcase and asked me to sign them.

‘The man then said he needed the remaining three thousand dollars and Ade asked if he could wait for a few minutes. The man became very upset and started shouting that this was not the agreement, that if he didn’t have the remainder of the money he would have to take the trunk back with him.

‘Ade started begging him to wait in the corridor for a short time and that he would be able to sort everything out. I must admit I was pretty shocked about how angry the man had been – for a few minutes it all seemed to be going horribly wrong – but once the man was out of the room Ade squeezed my arm and told me everything was going to be fine.

‘He opened the case and my eyes lit up. It was full of hundred-dollar bills, stacked from top to bottom. I’d never seen so much money in my life and was absolutely transfixed. To one side of the cash was a small polystyrene box and Ade took it out and opened it and pulled out a bottle. He and the doctor then started saying something about the fact that there was only a tiny amount left and I asked them to explain.

‘The chemist passed me the bottle and explained that it contained a chemical compound called Lactima Base ninety-eight per cent, which they needed to clean money. I looked at the bottle and saw that most of the material had solidified and only a small amount remained liquid at the very top. The doctor said that for security reasons all the bills had been marked with a stamp that invalidated them and that the liquid is used to remove the stamp. He planned to wash three thousand dollars to pay the balance to the man from the security company, but that there was only enough left to wash two hundred dollars.

‘The chemist then pulled the first two notes off the pile in the trunk and showed them to me. Both had thick black stamps on one side which read UNDP. Ade said this stood for United Nations Development Programme and had been stamped on the money as a security precaution when his father had sent it out of Nigeria. Had it been lost in transit, the stamps would have rendered the money worthless.

‘The chemist then took the notes back, spilled a few drops of the liquid on to each and began rubbing them with some tissue paper. I watched as the black marks faded away leaving behind a slightly soggy but genuine hundred-dollar bill. It was almost magical.

‘But Ade was concerned. He said that because we had now run out of Lactima, we wouldn’t be able to pay the courier and he would have to take the money away. He seemed genuinely worried and everything he had said earlier about just how much his family were relying on him getting money to them in order to get them out of Nigeria came flooding back to me.

‘Without hesitation I said that I could probably get enough money out of my bank and credit cards to make up the balance. I was the one who suggested it, but I guess it was exactly what they had been waiting for all along. But even then the alarm bells were not ringing. The man from the security company, the forms I had signed, everything had seemed so genuine that I could see no cause for concern. And I was only taking out a few thousand dollars. It would never have occurred to me that they would get me to travel to Amsterdam, then scam me for such a small amount of money.

‘The chemist offered to drive me to the nearest ATM and off we went. We got back just in time – Ade said the courier had run out of patience and was about to leave.

‘We now had the trunk of money but were left with the problem of what to do about cleaning it. Ade said they would have to buy some more of the solution or try to restore the solidified material that they had but that, for obvious reasons, it was expensive and difficult to get hold of. I asked him what he meant by “expensive” and he said he would have to make some phone calls and get back to me.

‘I was due to fly back to London the next morning so I told Ade he would have to finish on his own. I suggested he get the solution on credit, then pay the company once he had cleaned the money – that seemed to be the sensible thing to do.

‘The next day Ade told me the Prime Chemical Company had carried out a test on the solution and managed to melt a small part of it. He then gave me an official-looking certificate, which had the results of their test. He said that they wanted forty-six thousand dollars to melt the rest. He said they wouldn’t deal on credit. He said he knew I didn’t have much money, and that he was so sorry to be asking me, but that it would be a shame if he had to go to someone else and make them the beneficiary of all the money because of the problems. He took me to the airport and gave me a big hug to say goodbye.

‘We stayed in touch by telephone and, when I seemed reluctant to come up with any more, Ade told me that he had been able to raise twenty thousand dollars so now I “only” had to find another twenty-six thousand. The figure kept dropping and dropping over the next few days until he realised that I suspected the whole thing was a scam and he gave up.

‘For a while I was really angry – with myself and with Ade and the others – but as I found out more about the kind of things these gangs are capable of, I realise that it’s far more likely that I just had an incredibly lucky escape.’

Noah had fallen for the so-called ‘black-money scam’, which is one of the most common being run by the Nigerian gangs in Amsterdam. The exotic and expensive mix of secret cleaning chemicals, which goes by such names as SSD Solution, Vectrol Paste, Lactima Base 98%, Microtectine and Tebi-Matonic, is really just ordinary cleaning fluid that reacts with the black mixture of Vaseline and iodine that has been stamped on the notes.

Although the victim is shown a full trunk of money, only those on the very top are genuine bills. The rest of the trunk is full of pieces of paper cut to banknote size. Any attempt by the victim to make a closer inspection of the contents of the trunk will be headed off by one of the gang who will come up with a pretext as to why this is not possible.

In front of the victim the criminal will appear to select at random between two and four notes from the case. Sometimes – as with Noah – they have been marked with a stamp. In other cases the notes are completely black. In reality, the criminal knows perfectly well which notes he is selecting and selects the only real ones there. A really dextrous criminal will invite the victim to choose notes to clean and, by using a well-practised sleight-of-hand similar to a card trick, dupe the victim into selecting the genuine ones.

The solidified-solution scam is just one variation. Another involves a specially rigged bottle of the cleaning chemical, which is left with the victim at the end of the evening. Some time during the night the bottle explodes, spraying the precious liquid all around the victim’s hotel room. It is only then that the victim learns just how expensive the chemical is and is asked to shell out for a replacement.

Yet another variation involves notes that are not actually stamped or coloured. If a potential victim seems to be dragging their heels about whether the scheme is genuine or not, the gang will arrange for a trunk of money to be delivered to the person’s hotel room. The sight of all that cash is usually enough to convince the most sceptical person that the transaction is genuine and that they were foolish to have any doubts. Most people are so impressed by the display that they fail to consider the reality of the situation.

The largest denomination of US currency is a hundred-dollar bill. Even when they are brand new, 500 such bills form a pile three inches high. This means that $1 million in US currency would form a pile 500 feet high. Even if it were possible to fit such an amount into a trunk, it would probably not be possible for a single person to lift it. Once again, only the top notes will be genuine.

Being shown the money is as close as anyone will ever get to it. Just before the trunk is handed over, the Nigerian playing the part of the representative of the security company will ask for the victim’s certificate of something or other. In yet another round of good-cop bad-cop the members of the gang will be embarrassed or angry that this has been overlooked and tell the victim that the minor problem can be resolved for a simple payment of up to $250,000. If the money is forthcoming the victim will be the proud owner of a trunkful of blank pieces of paper.

Although the goal of the gangs is to extract as much money from their victims as possible, they will often settle for considerably less than anyone would expect. According to the man from NCIS, this is down to simple economics: ‘You have to remember that the average wage in West Africa is around twenty pounds per month. They might start out asking for ten thousand but they will drop and drop, claim to have managed to raise money on their own, and keep going down in price until you stop resisting. At the end of the day they are happy to get anything out of you, no matter how little it ultimately is.’

Increasing public awareness of some forms of the scam is leading to others being introduced. Instead of money sneaked out of war-torn African nations, the emails now appear far more personal, rather than part of a mass mail shot, and give no clue of any connection to Nigeria. The authors also claim erroneously to have connections to legitimate banks and financial institutions in order to lull their victims into a false sense of security.

Dear Sir
:

Good day to you. My name is P
—
W
—.
I am a senior partner in De Rosenberg Consulting, U.K. We have been engaged by Barclays Private Banking, London, UK, to carry out a search. We are conducting a standard process investigation involving a client who shares a similar name with you and also the circumstances surrounding investments made by this client at Barclays Private Banking. The Barclays Private Banking client died intestate despite investments under Barclays Private Banking management. The essence of this communication with you is to request you provide us information concerning three issues: 1 – Are you aware of any relative/ relation, born 1st October 1930, who shares your same name whose last known contact address was Brussels, Belgium? 2 – Are you aware of any investment of considerable value made by such a person at the Private Banking Division of Barclays Bank PLC? 3 – Can you establish beyond reasonable doubt your legal eligibility to the estate of the deceased?