Meet Emmanuel Nwude, The Biggest Nigerian Scammer In History

Meet Emmanuel Nwude:

The Nigerian man sold an airport that does not exist for $242 Million.

Emmanuel Nwude pulled off one of the largest banking frauds, interestingly, before the ease of global interactions brought about by the internet.

Background

Around 1995, Nwude, a former director with his local accomplices at one of Nigeria's biggest banks, exploited their knowledge of local and international banking operations to pull off an elaborate con. Of course, as these things go, some greedy individuals at the other end had to be there to take the bait. Enter Nelson Sakaguchi, Director of Banco Noroeste, a Brazilian bank.

The Con

Cashing in on his experience as a bank director with regular interactions with the Central Bank of Nigeria, Mr. Nwude successfully impersonated the governor of the Central Bank of the country, contacting Mr. Sakaguchi about a new Nigeria airport to be built in his capital Abuja. The catch, right? $10 million in commissions, if the deal was successful. Convinced, Mr. Sakaguchi promptly released a total of $191 million in cash and the rest in the form of outstanding interests to allegedly finance the construction project at the airport.

How was the fraud discovered?

Interestingly, Nwude's scam was not discovered until 1997, when the Spanish Banco Santander was performing their due diligence as part of a Banco Noroeste takeover. A joint board meeting of the banks had seen Spanish bank representatives wondering what half of the capital of the Brazilian bank (about two-fifths of the total value of Noroeste) was doing on an unmonitored bank account in the Cayman Islands. Their inquiry led to investigations in Brazil, the United Kingdom, Nigeria, Switzerland, and the United States which eventually revealed the fraud.

Justice or some of it

Military rule in Nigeria at the time of discovery meant that little or no attention was paid to advance fee frauds. There was quite frankly, some degree of acceptance of crimes that were preying on foreigners' greed. The return to democratic rule saw a severe need to restore the poor image of the country on various fronts and a Financial Crimes Commission was set up in 2002 to specifically tackle these and other financial crimes with advance fee frauds doing the greatest damage.

By 2004, the commission's no-nonsense head managed to arraign all members of the crime syndicate and by 2005, after one member had confessed in exchange for a light sentence, the first conviction was made with a 2 and half year sentence as well as an order to repay $25.5 million.

During the trial, various attempts were made to disrupt proceedings with a bomb scare once prompting the trial to be adjourned, an attempt to kidnap a witness to the prosecution, and allegations of "flying around" money. The scale of desperation was to be brought to light when the commission chairman-a certain Mallam Nuhu Ribadu tendered as an exhibit, $75,000 in attempted bribe money (Mr. Ribadu was also to tender a $15 million bribe money in court in an unrelated case). In addition to the charges he faced, Mr. Nwude was subsequently arraigned for attempted bribery and kidnapping.

Following the witness of Sakaguchi, Nwude, realizing that his game was up, pleaded guilty in return for a lighter sentence and was subsequently sentenced to five concurrent five-year sentences with all of his assets confiscated and returned to his victim with a $10 million fine paid to the Nigerian government. Released from prison in 2006 Nwude filed a case to reclaim his assets insisting that before the criminal act some of them were acquired. He was reported to have had at least $52 million successfully reclaimed.

Mr. Nwude is currently in jail facing 27 charges including murder, attempted murder, and terrorist attacks following a land dispute in his home community.