The Man Who Sold a Fake Airport for $242 Million, Emmanuel Nwude (King of the Nigerian Princes)

Have you ever been contacted by a "Nigerian Prince", or other entity claiming that you can be part of a multi-million dollar deal, simply by providing them with your information? I recall getting an email that went along those lines, probably 6 or so years ago. These 419 scams are innovative and seem pretty convincing (some of them do at least).

Well have you ever heard of Emmanuel Nwude? This guy is like the Michael Jordan of Nigerian scammers. He was able to "sell" a fake airport to a Brazilian bank director (Nelson Sakaguchi) for a whopping $242 MILLION dollars in the mid-90s. The Brazilian bank, called Banco Noroeste (based out of San Paulo) later collapsed in 2001.

Emmanuel was later arrested in 2004, but the courts initially dismissed the case because the fraud did not take place in Abuja. As soon as Emmanuel (and his co-conspirators) walked out of court, they were re-arrested and the case was moved to Lagos (another Nigerian city). Bomb scares and bribery were also used in an attempt to have (whatever the Nigerian courts' equivalent is of) a mistrial or the case thrown out.

Emmanuel was eventually sentenced to several years in prison, and had all of his assets seized. However, he fought the courts, and claimed he possessed a lot of these assets before the Fake Airport scheme, and (according to Wikipedia) has already gotten somewhere to the tune of $52 million back in his possession. I just heart about this today.

More details can be found here: Wikipedia


Another story about the Michael Jordan of Nigerian Scammers: Article

A quote from that story:

On Thursday, May 7th, 2015 at the court Nwude, through his lawyer, argued that the sentence given to him was unknown to law and not contained in Act establishing the offence.

Unbelievable. Happy Monday (happy Tuesday to our friends Down Under/in the East) , I thought this was a fun story.

-FC

a reply to: FamCore

The scam was so big they even fake arrested him, taxed him for most of the money and let him go if he promises to keep it quiet.

imo

a reply to: intrptr

Makes sense to me!

Still more consequence than if you pull off white-collar crime in the West

a reply to: FamCore

Still more consequence than if you pull off white-collar crime in the West

His bosses are probably in the West.