Nigerian Scam on ABC's 20/20 - Page 4 - Nigerian Movies & Nollywood on Naijarules.com

Obariba · #46 (**permalink**) 12-10-2006, 11:36 PM

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But suppose that you are gullible, stupid and criminal enough, to volunteer your personal information and banking accounts details? To enable someone and yourself engage in what you know is a criminal enterprise/undertaking?

The crooks are very HONEST, they tell the gullible sucker from the beginning, that they, the crooks are attempting to perpetrate fraud on someone else, other than the gullible sucker, and the gullible sucker says to himself, WOW! This is one DUPE, this is one FRAUDSTER, this is one CRIMINAL that I can TRUST, Look! The crook is not trying to dupe me! The crook is Even some of our citizens seem to glorify and elevate these scurrilous and odious disparagement, it has become such a recycled garbage, that one would think that we as Nigerians should begin to re-examine our role in repeating this slander against our country;

The gullible and sucker, then says to himself, Let do it! And engages the crooks in the art of meaningful dialogue and negotiations, then, the HONEST crook, now dupes the gullible sucker!

Why do Nigerians and Nigeria have to apologize for these?

These Gullible and Suckers, even have the audacity to want to enforce their illegal and criminal transactions in courts! What temerity they have!?

How is trying to steal money from the Nigerian government or company or from taxpayers any less criminal than trying to aid and abet a crook in his efforts to import or export Cocaine? $50 million is $50million! Whether stolen from Nigerian taxpayers or as proceeds from drugs/narcotic transactions! Helping to commit any crime is EGREGIOUS!

Why are foreigners who shamelessly display avarice and greed and the highest moral turpitude portrayed as victims of crimes? They are no victims, perhaps only victims of their own greed and get-rich-quick schemes! Why do they do it

Every visit to chat rooms on the internet where Nigerians are present, inevitably lead to a discussion about the latest of the latest of latest 419 stories!

Henceforth, well meaning Nigerians should desist from wallowing in the mud with those who are glad to malign Nigeria or bring Nigerians and Nigeria to disrepute, the idea of repeating this slander or even embellishing it, does not help Nigerians, whether at home or abroad, it ruins our collective reputation, it acts as a stigma to our collective decency and integrity.

Perception is reality, and image as they say in public relations, is everything! We should not give currency and credence to the odium being spread about Nigerians, Majority of Nigerians are law abiding! Why should we allow others to define Nigeria's collective reputation, solely based on the negative behavior of a few bad apples?.

Perhaps it will help to drive the message home to always remind ourselves that we are no participants in these scams and further, that we personally know of nobody in our family that is involved and moreover, the percentage of our population involved in this negative conduct, is alarmingly insignificant, hence we should reject the automatic response of those who are quick to resort to sweeping generalization about Nigerians and African!

We should realize that those who repeat these titillating stories to us about these fraudsters are really talking about us, not the fraudsters! We should not join the hilarity of dinner jokes when it includes these sweeping generalizations about Nigerians and Nigeria, We can broaden the horizon of those present by discussing Nigerians who have excelled in legitimate professions or any calling of human endeavors.

We should not recoil in shame or embarrassment, We should not be cowered or cowed, commentaries relating to these bad apples are usually to make the Nigerian cringe or feel uncomfortable and apologetic, it is mostly an attempt to distract and humiliate, always ask the commentator, 'Is there anything else that you know about Nigerians and Nigeria?'

A good beginning could be informing all those present that we are 120 million Nigerians, we are good, decent and hospitable people, narrate Nigeria's human and mineral endowment and more, if the listener is receptive, recommend a visit to different websites where more relevant positive information about Nigeria can be gleamed.

But if she is belligerent, mention to him and her that you regularly receive junk mail regarding spurious offers for the enlargements of different body parts, but that you casually ignore such offers! Add that you know hair transplant and all claims to grow new hair on a bald head is hocus-pocus and that you usually promptly discard such mails.
I personally receive up to 100 junk emails daily, making all kinds of propositions, legal and illegal, 'earn a college degree without a day in class or study' and I do not call the SWAT team, the US Marines or my lawyer for help, the a function on my computer called delete!

News Flask/Breaking News! When you receive solicitations? Delete!

While at it, remind her of the fact that, you regularly receive junk mails informing you that 'you may already have WON TEN MILLION DOLLARS!!!' but that you do not get excited or sue any company or country, you just trash the outlandish and outrageous offers of deceits and get-rich-quick schemes! Mention that crooks are beasts of no nation, that the recent spate of corporate failures including Enron, WorldCom, Adelphia etc were not because of Nigerians! There is a loss of more than $42 billion to fraud yearly in the US and none of these frauds are connected with the 419ers pittance of nuisance value.

Is Mafia, Corruption or Fraud a Hausa, Ibo or Yoruba word?

Self-respecting Nigerians should reject these negative stereo-types, labels and stigma that we do not deserve, we should quit wallowing in the mud with pigs and detractors of Nigerians and Nigeria, they are actually enjoying it! Stop them!

You may also ask if him to tell you where the 'pyramid schemes' were invented, or where 'cold call telemarketing' was invented, or to explain 'piggy-backing or' 'churning' or 'lemon law' or 'bait and switch' are all about? There are endless examples of fraudulent examples that people with negative bent indulge in, negative people who are not Nigerians!

Give Nigeria a break! Enough already!

Everyone is welcome to do business in Nigeria, with Nigeria, but do so legitimately, do so through proper channels.

There are abundant and boundless opportunities in Nigeria. God Bless you as you take your businesses and investments to Nigeriatrying to dupe someone else, some country elsewhere or some company elsewhere!

............shamelessly display avarice and greed and the highest moral turpitude portrayed as victims of crimes?

Obariba · #47 (**permalink**) 12-10-2006, 11:57 PM

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It is sickening just to read some of the responses to this report. Am I mistaken or is something very wrong with the heads of some of us. This is a serious serious REPROACH to us as a nation and as individuals. It not only smears us (NIGERIANS) but by extension the entire black race. Most foreigners can’t tell who is a Nigeria among a group of black people. One commentator (aiksmart)made some serious suggestions on how to curb this cancer and he gets such an irresponsible reply it is unbelievable!!!!!!! These 419 scams are huge setback for us as a nation; it may take more than a generation to correct. We have as a nation been labelled as thieves rogues, dupes, fraudsters etc etc and all we have to say is that only greedy people fall for the scheme!!!. Or we are getting back what they stole from us!!I marvel at the utter selfishness and stupidity of some of us; Selfishness because we seem to be thinking only in the short term and only about ourselves. And stupidity because we really don’t appreciate the immensity of the problem and the attendant consequence it has brought on us.

Some of us who have registered businesses here in Europe and who want to do honest business know how difficult it is do anything once they hear the word “Nigerian” it’s like a curse, just because of the action of a few (but growing business). Most operations in these developed countries are based on trust. Credits, guarantees, etc etc, that’s how the normal citizens and businesses operate. Nobody wants to extend credit or give guarantees to Nigerians and it makes ones operations much more expensive and then we get special scrutiny from all the supervisory bodies whew!! I don’t think we really realise what these people have gotten us into. Try walking into any chamber of commerce office in Europe and ask for intelligence reports of Nigeria or the cost index of doing business in Nigeria and you will understand what I mean. The result is that operating from or with any business in Nigeria becomes a nightmare before it starts. We as a nation are the losers as a lot of investment opportunities which should have come our way will go elsewhere.

This whole 419 issue is an offshoot of the corrupt culture which has reached alarming proportions in Nigeria. Whole subcultures of corruption have been developed and it will take the grace of God to reverse the trend. I was reading a tread here in NVS sometime back about fraud in medicare in Texas and one commentator stated that they should not bother with a particular fellow because he had used a lot of the fraudulently gotten money to develop his village at home!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!. I assume this was an educated respondent saying this on NVS. This kind of mentality in itself is deeply troubling but the fact that the writer could even come out on NVS to say it makes me marvel. It shows the corrupting culture has gone very deep. We need some very very drastic measure back home and here to really reverse this trend otherwise one day we will wake up and nobody will want to have anything to do with us Nigerians and other poor Africans. The developed world have very little to gain from us as a continent

WE SHOULD WAKE UP AS BLACK PEOPLE, UNTIL WE GET OUR ACT TOGETHER AS NIGERIANS (THE MOST POPULOUS BLACK NATION), BLACKS ANYWHERE IN THE WORLD WILL STILL BE SECOND CLASS CITIZENS WITH A REPROACH ON THERE HEADS

Reproach on our heads !

Obariba · #48 (**permalink**) 12-11-2006, 12:14 AM

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To attempt to answer your questions, human nature is associated largely with generalisations, and when a set of events keep occuring around a set of population, then generalisations take root.

This is similar to events in Nigeria where the political class have been associated with monetary corruption, the Hausa/Fulani with religious intolerance and sectarian killings, the Tiv with excessive love for sex, the Igbo with fake drug (medicine) distribution, the Yoruba with hard drug couriering, the Edo/Delta with prostitution in foreign lands and now lately the Akwa Ibom/Cross River with medicaid fraud. As for 419, that appears now to be the past time of youths from all sections of the country.

Nevertheless, there is no gainsaying that the actual truth is that majority of the members of these classes (except perhaps the political class) are innocent of the sweeping generalisations they are tainted with. But as with most things humanly, the generalisation trend appears to be the simplest way to describe the vice in question. That said, the big question now is how come Nigerians, amongs other blacks, are always fingered in negative tendencies? These range from drug trafficking, 419, prostitution, child trafficking, medicaid fraud, identity theft, illegal immigration and...... I can go on and on. Given my generalisation hypothesis above, you can see how and why Nigerians are always mentioned, and in many cases not just being mentioned, but being actually seen and proven to be involved in these negativities. So how then do you want to be treated when at every turn of event a Nigerian is always involved? We should desist from soliciting the sympathy of other Africans, because if anything, they also loat the shame that some Nigerians have brought on the black race. It is true that the entire black race is disadvantaged and discriminated against, but Nigerians have been exceptionally discriminated against because of certains things that have consistently been associated with us. This is the simple truth and what I think is fundamentally wrong. As things stand now, individual Nigerians will have to prove their trustworthiness. I am afraid that for us, there is no such thing as blanket innocence for some time to come. Many Nigerians are simply too greedy and parents from all parts of the country are largely to blame for the gaping decadence and unbridled materialism. Nigeria does not need just economic emancipation, we need also moral emancipation and cleansing, and the later in large doses

Demographically speaking !!

Obariba · #49 (**permalink**) 12-11-2006, 12:34 AM

American Media's Recycled Garbage? Competition for RATINGS at Nielsen?

The Crooks, The Gullible, And 419 Scams Or Wallowing In The Mud ?
By: Paul I. Adujie
New York, USA

April 1, 2003

Everyday, there is something new about the 419 scams and the perpetrators or 419ers? The latest episode is the new twist that I read from the web page of gamji.com, new twist is now even not so useful a term in this context, as there is always a new twist or modus operandi by these crooks.

There are now several websites specifically dedicated and devoted to this nuisance, yes it is more nuisance than anything else. This is not writing to defend the scam artists, but I am beginning to wonder why 419 scam artists are now the only Nigerians that people want to talk and write about? I understand that some members of the international public has this huge appetite for scandals, especially when it emanates from Africa, therefore only stories form Africa that titillates is fit to appear in the newspapers and on the internet; Ebola! AIDS! War in Africa! Three Kenyans dies fishing for cell phone in a cesspool!

Nobody seem interested in the fact that there are more than 26,000 Medical Doctors of Nigerian origin in the United States, nobody seem interested in the other uncountable professionals of Nigerian origin in Europe and America, Lawyers, Doctors, Economists, Information Technology Professionals, Nurses to name a few.

We know it is said that, it is big news when a man bites a dog, but it is no news when a dog bites a man, but even so, why is it? That those who talk about a few shady characters of Nigerian origin are happily oblivious of the majority of Nigerians who are hardworking and are exceptional and exemplary citizens in Nigeria, in America, Europe and Asia? Why do they suffer from this shattering amnesia when it comes to positive Nigerians and positive events emanating from Nigeria and all of Africa?

Majority of Nigerians the world over contribute immensely to the communities in which they live, they work, they pay taxes, these Nigerians participate in all that is good, they volunteer their time and money to improve their place of residence outside of Nigeria.

It has become tiring and irritating that 419ers or fraud is the only dinner joke that some people are happy to repeat about Nigeria! Let us talk about Philip Emeagwali the Information Technology whiz kid instead, he is of Nigerian origin! And many, many more overachievers of Nigerian origins! Let us talk about Shade Adu the singer, he is of Nigerian origin! Let us talk about people of Nigerian origin who are contributing their quota of service to international institutions, persons of Nigerian origin currently serve the World Bank, International Court of Justice and even the United Nations!

NTB · #50 (**permalink**) 12-11-2006, 10:56 AM

Oyibo de chop our oil and we de chop their $, a kind of 0-sum-game.

NTB · #51 (**permalink**) 12-11-2006, 11:23 AM

Prior to that disparaging broadcast on ABC 20/20, Dr Phil had devoted an hour on Nigerian e-love scams on Thanksgiving day. These broadcasts painted Nigeria as a country peopled by scammers and con artists. Anti Spam software industry is a money-spinning venture, which to my little knowledge has not benefited any Nigerian. This is not to praise these scammers or spammers, who do a great deal of disservice to Nigeria, but there should be some balance on the part of western press which always portray everybody in Nigeria as scammers even though Switzerland is not part of European Union and European Economic Area which makes it a money launderer's haven. Let us remember that fraudulent accounting practices and corporate frauds from Sunbeam, Waste Management, Enron, Global Crossing, Qwest, and WorldCom cost investors about $300 billion which is 1/10 of Nigerian national budget. The difference here is that US has a rigid legal process that brought most of these corporate fraudsters to book, but the same process is non-existent in Nigeria. It's also mind refreshing to know that Reuters reported that the US has more prisoners than any country in the world. I wish they had shown how Congressman Jefferson of New Orleans got $90,000 bribe from his Nigerian accomplice or how Halliburton paid bribes in order to get contracts and evade tax in Nigeria.

Besides, all Saudis cannot be called terrorist because some disgruntled Saudis were involved in 9/11 or some terrorist activities. Also all Italians cannot be called mafia since there is a high prevalence of mafia in Southern Italy or could all Northern Irish be called terrorist because of violent and bitter ethno-political conflict between Catholics and Protestants? More so, does it make sense to call all Mexicans drug traffickers even though most of their customers and accomplices are based in the US? This is a shear selection of western journalism that always portrays the weak as a victim and cause of all ills of the society. There needs to be a holistic debate about scams in Nigeria because there is no difference between a scammer and a victim since every scam letter sets the tone of the transaction" illegally acquired wealth".

It also seemed to me that ABC's 20/20 crew did a shoddy journalistic work by saying that every Nigerian glorifies scammers without looking at how hip-pop culture, which glorifies gangs, sex, drugs, and so many deviant behaviors cannot be said to be a standard behavior in the US. "I go chop your dollar sound track " is a satire meant to warn greedy 419 future victims, besides, Nkem Owoh is a popular Nigerian actor not a singer. I believe comparison is based on two known conditions and the comparative benchmark employed by ABC crew was that of a xenophobic and stereotypical sentiment typical of American media. They also said that Americans were losing billions to Nigerian scammers, where as oil is the only venture where US trades with Nigeria in billions, not scams. I get inundated with scam emails ranging from free vacation, lottery, free viagra, phishing emails, paypal system update scam from the US. Now does this mean that everybody is the US is a scammer? NO If you watched "We Were Warned'' on CNN, where they depicted Nigeria with sub machine guns, even though they had shown some human faces in Saudi government and Aramco as well as that of Hugo Chavez despite his frosty relationship with the US. I was asking myself why didn't CNN show a human face, maybe a government official from Nigeria. Why did CNN depict Nigeria with arms despite the fact that Saudi Arabia is more prone to violence and terrorism?

A cause for action should embody but not limited to drafting a strong letter to Nigerian Embassy to know why it has not publicly refuted most of these unfounded allegations. I wonder what's the job of our foreign diplomats who are saddled with responsibility of packaging and marketing Nigeria abroad. I remember before the premier of Box office hit comedy, BORAT, Kazakhstan government ran a four-page advertisement in The New York Times extolling its democracy, education, power structure and women liberty in order to disapprove of the way it was portrayed in BORAT. We also have to condemn these scammers because they are really doing a lot of damage to Nigeria's image abroad.

Author Unknown

bigmomma · #52 (**permalink**) 12-11-2006, 01:22 PM

My reply to that abc broadcast is short and simple

YOU ARE THE MUGU I AM THE MASTER
COS YA BEHIND IS GREEEDY AS HECK

Now when it comes to ebay i am mad at them fools
fooling ppl that are trying to hustle
shoot dont be knocking ma hustle o

omotola86 · #53 (**permalink**) 12-11-2006, 11:34 PM

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Originally Posted by NTB

Oyibo de chop our oil and we de chop their $, a kind of 0-sum-game.

Abeg u talk am right. As for me oh that investigation was plain one-sided and another way to pull down the black.