Police Arrest Cyber-Cafe Owner For Throwing Out 419 Scammer?

Scams

from the so-much-for-the-crackdown dept

Earlier this month we wrote about the latest in a long line of claims from the Nigerian government that they were really (no, seriously) about to crack down on 419 scammers. A bunch of folks from Nigeria responded to say that the scams weren’t as big a deal as reports had made them out to be, but this was quickly followed up by an article in the LA Times about, among other things, how one of the more popular songs in Festac, Lagos is now about how much fun 419 scams are. In the meantime, we received this submission this morning: Seun writes “The Festac, Lagos policemen don’t seem to be aware of the Government campaign against corruption – especially the 419 scam. Here’s one cyber-cafe owner’s account of how he was arrested by the police for trying to throw a scammer out of his premises. The reporter further alleges that the scammers actually pay the policemen to protect them.” Obviously, at this point there’s no evidence to back up the story, but it does show that stopping these scams is likely going to take more than just an announcement from those at the top of the government (and some assistance from Microsoft). There’s clearly a lot of corruption going on, and that’s not easy to wipe out over night.