It was reported on Wednesday this week that an Anguillian citizen was lured into sending money to a Nigerian man who claimed that someone had died there leaving a large sum of money and that he (the Nigerian) was looking for a bank account in Anguilla to transfer the funds. In blind faith, the person in Anguilla not only gave him her bank account number, but sent him, in installments, over US$10,000 which he had requested before making the transfer into her account. That was the end of the story. No money was received into her savings and the money she sent him was fraudulently taken.

Inspector Andy Arsenault

The story was related to the local media on Wednesday this week by Inspector Andy Arsenault, head of the Financial Investigation Unit of the Royal Anguilla Police Force.

The victim made the complaint to the police on Tuesday, December 29, a year after the incident.

“We received a complaint from a person on Anguilla that in January of 2009, they had been scammed in excess of US$10, 000,” Mr. Arsenault stated. “The scam has been around for a while and we reported on this before, but I think in coming to the end of 2009, it may be timely that we speak to it again. In this case, one of the citizens here in Anguilla…said that a Nigerian male, stating that he was a descendant of persons who died and left money in a savings account; that all the family members had died and that there were no other relatives that could be traced.

“That being said, the gentleman from Nigeria requested the person in Anguilla to fill out some forms which gave information about her bank account here in Anguilla and allegedly she would get an extraordinary amount of millions of British pounds into her account. As a sign of good faith, to make sure that everything went well, the person in Anguilla needed to send some money first. So this person was convinced to send three lots of money to the Ivory Coast and the sum was in excess of US$10,000.”

Mr. Arsenault observed that such scams were prevalent throughout the world, netting billions of dollars annually for fraud groups. He alleged that fraud was one of the largest net businesses in Nigeria, an African country internationally recognised as a fraud centre.

He advised that persons seeing correspondence about money deals coming from Nigeria, or one of the neighbouring countries, should be extremely wary and not become involved.
Commenting further on the loss of money from Anguilla, the Financial Crime Investigator told the reporters: “People hold the blind hope they are going to recover the money or that the perpetrator is telling them the truth….One more time we are giving you the message to hopefully save some Anguillians from future losses.”

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