Online scams create "Yahoo! millionaires"

[abdulhakeem]

By Leonard Lawal, FORTUNE
May 22, 2006

In Lagos, where scamming is an art, the quickest path to wealth for the cyber-generation runs through a computer screen.

(FORTUNE Magazine) - Akin is, like many things in cyberspace, an alias. In real life he's 14. He wears Adidas sneakers, a Rolex Submariner watch, and a kilo of gold around his neck.

Akin, who lives in Lagos, is one of a new generation of entrepreneurs that has emerged in this city of 15 million, Nigeria's largest. His mother makes $30 a month as a cleaner, his father about the same hustling at bus stations. But Akin has made it big working long days at Internet cafes and is now the main provider for his family and legions of relatives.

Call him a "Yahoo! millionaire."

Akin buys things online - laptops, BlackBerries, cameras, flat-screen TVs - using stolen credit cards and aliases. He has the loot shipped via FedEx or DHL to safe houses in Europe, where it is received by friends, then shipped on to Lagos to be sold on the black market. (He figures Americans are too smart to sell a camera on eBay to a buyer with an address in Nigeria.)

Akin's main office is an Internet cafe in the Ikeja section of Lagos. He spends up to ten hours a day there, seven days a week, huddled over one of 50 computers, working his scams.

And he's not alone: The cafe is crowded most of the time with other teenagers, like Akin, working for a "chairman" who buys the computer time and hires them to extract e-mail addresses and credit card information from the thin air of cyberspace. Akin's chairman, who is computer illiterate, gets a 60 percent cut and reserves another 20 percent to pay off law enforcement officials who come around or teachers who complain when the boys cut school. That still puts plenty of cash in Akin's pocket.

A sign at the door of the cafe reads, WE DO NOT TOLERATE SCAMS IN THIS PLACE. DO NOT USE E-MAIL EXTRACTORS OR SEND MULTIPLE MAILS OR HACK CREDIT CARDS. YOU WILL BE HANDED OVER TO THE POLICE. NO 419 ACTIVITY IN THIS CAFE. The sign is a joke; 419 activity, which refers to the section of the Nigerian law dealing with obtaining things by trickery, is a national pastime. There are no coherent laws relating to e-scams, the police are mostly computer illiterate, and penalties for financial crimes are light.

No penalties for breaking the law

"The deterrent factor is not there at all," says Thomas Oli, a Lagos lawyer, citing the case of a former police inspector general who was convicted of stealing more than $100 million and got only six months in jail.

"What do you want me to do?" Akin asks in pidgin English, explaining why he turned to a life of Internet crime. "It is my God-given talent. Our politicians, they do their own; me, I'm doing my own. I feed my family - my sister, my mother, my popsie. Man must survive."

The scams perpetrated by Akin and his comrades are many and varied: moneygram interceptions, Western Union hijackings, check laundering, identity theft, and outright begging, with tall tales of dying relatives and large sums of money in search of safe haven. One popular online fraud often practiced by women (or boys pretending to be women) involves separating lonely men from their money.

Attempts to speak to government officials about Internet crime were futile. They all claimed ignorance of such scams; some laughed it off as Western propaganda.

But last November the Economic Fraud and Financial Crimes Commission won a high-profile case that had dragged on for years against Emmanuel Nwude, who pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 25 years for bilking a Brazilian bank out of $242 million using an Internet scam involving phony bank drafts. The commission is also pursuing a case against 419 kingpin Fred Ajudua, a lawyer and businessman accused of using the Internet to steal $1 million from a victim in Germany.

Some officials, who asked not be identified, said young people are drawn to Internet crime as a way of getting back at a society that has no plans for them. Others see it as a form of reparation for the sins of the West.

Or as Akin puts it, "White people are too gullible. They are rich, and whatever I gyp them out of is small change to them."

http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/2006/05/29/8378124/?cnn=yes

[abdulhakeem]

Piracy thrives as Nigeria hurtles into the digital age
The country has a booming telecoms market, but enforcing intellectual property is an uphill battle
AP , LAGOS, NIGERIA
Sunday, Mar 19, 2006,Page 12

http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/bizfocus/archives/2006/03/19/2003298173

full story - different title:

Nigeria's answer to Silicon Valley

Dulue Mbachu | Lagos, Nigeria
14 March 2006

Peddlers of pirated software now hold sway on the very streets where drug dealers and prostitutes plied their wares a decade ago in Nigeria's biggest city.

Otigba Street. Ola Ayeni Street. Even in the adjoining Pepple Street -- where renowned musician Fela Anikulapo-Kuti had the popular venue where he smoked pot on stage. Every building in the Ikeja district is now packed with computer and cellphone ware, and business is also done on the streets.

The Computer Village of Lagos is Nigeria's response to Silicon Valley, a chance to get in on the digital revolution on the cheap.

"This place is the biggest computer market in the entire West Africa," said Kazeem Adenuga, a computer engineer and specialist dealer in laptops and accessories.

"People come from Ghana, Senegal and even Congo. And they always say they get the cheapest prices here," he added proudly.

On average 80% of all software in use in Africa are pirated copies, according to the Business Software Alliance of the world's leading software-makers and their hardware partners. Only wealthier South Africa, at 37%, has a piracy rate close to the global average of 35%.

Gerald Ilukwe, manager for Nigeria and Ghana for the world's leading software-maker Microsoft, says creating an awareness of intellectual property laws is a major challenge of doing business in West Africa. He said only a core of multinational companies and government agencies use licensed software.

"There are those who don't know it's a crime [to use pirated software] and there are those who are out and out cheats," said Ilukwe.

"It's this last group we are ready to go all the way with to make sure they comply with the law."

People may use illegal software because they cannot afford licensed copies. Software makers argue the intellectual property system is necessary because protecting investments stimulating the digital revolution safeguards the interests of society as a whole.

Traders at the Computer Village say many of the cheap information and communication products on sale in Computer Village are from Asia, mainly China, Malaysia and Taiwan. Cloned computers and cheap cellphones are the most popular products.

Pirated copies of Microsoft Office and Adobe Photoshop software sell for as low as 150 naira ($1,05).

Cellphone handsets, both clones of popular brands and originals, are big sellers in the face of the country's rapidly expanding cellphone network. Some new and used Nokia cell phone brands go for as low 3 000 naira ($20).

More people are using computers in business and the popularity of the internet has grown. Some of the demand for computers, phones and internet access in Nigeria have been fuelled by organised crime, especially the internet scammers who have become notorious around the world.

As in large parts of Africa, much of the digital access has been limited to cities and major urban centres and yet to reach rural areas. Official figures show that while cellphone usage has reached wider penetration, that of the internet is still less than
five percent.

Dial-up internet access in Nigeria at an average of $80 a month is still prohibitive for the 70% of the population estimated to live on less than $1 a day. The same goes for most of the continent.

But more and more people are getting online through cybercafès that largely depend on increasingly cheaper broadband connections.

Internet use across Africa is estimated to have risen more than 100% in the past three years, according to Balancing Act Africa, a South Africa-based internet consultancy. It is expected to rise another 81% in the next three years as monopolies and the exclusive agreements of current providers give away to further deregulation and prices crash, the group says.

Recognising that an efficient communication system is key to development, Nigeria created a new national communication policy in 2000 committing the government to ensuring that public telecommunications services reach all communities in the country.

A special levy charged from the profits of telecommunications companies was introduced to provide a pool of funds for use in facilitating the deployment of services to rural areas by firms that would otherwise restrict their operations to more lucrative cities.

Companies are now being given licenses that permit the convergence of telephone and internet services.

"Today, Nigeria is rated as one of the fastest growing telecommunications markets in the world," said Ernest Ndukwe, head of Nigeria's National Communications Commission.

African governments in meetings to forge a common position ahead of the World Summit on the Information Society last November were concerned about access to information and communication technology.

Apart from calling for assistance to remove barriers to crossing the digital divide, a joint declaration of 52 African governments on the emerging information society called for the promotion of open source software to reduce cost.

They also worried about the continent's poor presence in the production of digital content.

Microsoft, which opened an office in Lagos in 2000 and has seen sales grow 40% there since, is taking a long term view of Nigeria's potential and that of similar African countries.

Through its "partnership-in-learning" programme, it has set up computer training centers in parts of the country.

"Nigeria still has a very low penetration of information technology," said Ilukwe. "That is why we are emphasising computer education and training."

He believes that the more people use information technology, the more local content will be created and the better for the market.

http://www.mg.co.za/articlepage.aspx?area=/breaking_news/breaking_news__business/&articleid=266678

[abdulhakeem]

'Digital Dumps' Heap Hazards at Foreign Sites

By Elizabeth Grossman
Special to The Washington Post
Monday, December 12, 2005

Each month, hundreds of thousands of used computers, televisions and other electronic components -- about 500 container loads -- arrive in Nigeria.

Some of them were donated by people who thought they were helping satisfy the rapidly growing appetite for modern technology in a developing country where few can afford it. And some of them came from individuals or organizations that simply wanted to get rid of their obsolete equipment at the lowest cost.

Either way, at least half of the used equipment that arrives in Lagos by the ton is unusable and ends up in landfills, a Seattle-based nonprofit discovered recently after sending a team to survey the situation. The Basel Action Network (BAN) found that much of the junked equipment is adding to the considerable hazardous waste problems of a country that lacks facilities to properly handle it.

"There's an amazing expertise in repair, but so much of what's coming in is worthless that it is just dumped," said BAN's executive director, Jim Puckett. Photos taken by the group show enormous piles of junked electronics in wetlands, along roadsides, and burning in uncontained landfills that are routinely set ablaze to reduce bulk. These open dumps are often in cities and in residential neighborhoods. The pictures show children wandering near smoldering piles of computer and television parts.

The United Nations Environment Program estimates that 20 million to 50 million tons of electronics are discarded each year. Less than 10 percent of the discards get recycled, and half or more end up overseas, much exported for inexpensive, often unsafe and environmentally unsound recycling, primarily in China and India.

What is different about the exports to Africa, said Puckett, is that unusable equipment sent under the guise of recycling is also being trashed.

"We saw some kids taking copper off equipment in the dumps, and we were told some people were collecting circuit boards, but we saw no organized materials recovery at all," he said. Most major electronics manufacturers have take-back and recycling programs, but those efforts have yet to extend in a meaningful way to developing markets such as Nigeria, which has no electronics-recycling facilities.

Intact computer equipment is not hazardous, but when computer and television screens, circuit boards, batteries, and other high-tech electronics are broken up or burned or degrade, they release toxic materials that include lead, cadmium, barium, mercury and chromium. Plastic components contain brominated flame retardants that accumulate in human blood and fat tissue and can disrupt the body's hormonal balance. When burned, some of these plastics release dioxins and furans, persistent pollutants linked to a host of health problems, including cancer.

Reuse advocates such as Jim Lynch of San Francisco-based CompuMentor, which provides technology assistance to nonprofits, believe that extending the life of a computer by putting it into the reuse market is an environmentally sound solution. But many of the electronics that BAN members saw in and around the Ikeja "Computer Village" in Lagos were shipped by what Puckett called "waste cowboys acting as e-scrap brokers." Both said there are legitimate nonprofits that arrange donations of tested, working equipment to qualifying recipients, but much of the unusable equipment dumped in Lagos comes in with the large lots of used electronics imported as commercial resale.

"I call it environmental doom for the developing country and economic boom for the unscrupulous traders," said Oladele Osibanjo of the University of Ibadan, who was interviewed for BAN's recently released report, "The Digital Dump."

Most of the equipment sold for reuse by the thousands of electronics dealers in the Ikeja Computer Village, which has been dubbed the Silicon Valley of Lagos, comes from abroad, from the United States, Europe, Asia and the Middle East.

Among the computers BAN saw for sale and stockpiled were many that originally belonged to government agencies, businesses, schools and hospitals in the United States, Europe, Japan and Israel, all bearing original identification tags.

The United States, unlike the European Union and Japan, has no government-mandated system for recycling used electronics -- and no regulations to prevent the export of high-tech equipment for environmentally unsound recycling.

The United States also remains the only developed country that has not ratified the Basel Convention, a treaty designed to control international trade in hazardous waste. "This makes the U.S. a haven for a renegade scrap trade," Lynch said.

"It's a shadowy industry, and there's a lot more scrap than working computers," said Robert Houghton, president of Redemtech Inc. in Columbus, Ohio, which handles electronics recycling for Fortune 500 companies.

U.S. regulations allow export of used electronics and parts destined for reuse or recycling, but "unfortunately our government does nothing to distinguish between true reuse and the abuse of dumping on our global neighbors," Puckett said.

"It's extremely difficult to peel back the onion far enough to find out where the equipment goes. It may change hands two, three or four times before it leaves the country," Houghton said.

The lack of tracking of disposed material also raises data security issues. The Basel group purchased disk drives in Ikeja's Computer Village and had them analyzed by the Swiss firm NetMon. Among those that were readable were hard drives that belonged to the Wisconsin Department of Health and Family Services and the World Bank.

Typically, U.S. government agencies dispose of used electronics through surplus property offices. Equipment that cannot be used by other agencies and is not part of a donation program is sold at public auctions, most now conducted online.

Some buyers want the equipment for personal or small-business use, but much is bought by brokers or auctioneers who resell for reuse, parts or scrap value.

The General Services Administration, which handles these sales for the federal government, has a record of its buyers but does not follow up.

Many local governments and private businesses use private electronics recyclers, numbering in the hundreds. Numerous surplus property managers interviewed said they did not know what the recyclers did with the equipment; a number of recyclers declined to say or were vague about where they send the electronics they collect for processing or resale.

"Africa needs its own local industry, to be able to evolve its own local computers, to meet its own local need," Shina Badaru, editor of Nigeria's Technology Times, told BAN. "Africa does not need the used equipment coming in from the north to pose long-term threats to our environment."

But until substantial changes are made in materials used in electronics and how used equipment is handled, the bridge across the digital divide will ultimately lead, Puckett said, "to a digital dump."


http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/11/AR2005121100664.html

[ze leetle elper]

Yes abdulhakeem give me your account number and I will make you a millionnaire too :)

[Te'oma]

Shhhhhhuuuusssshhhhhhh
Don't let the republicans hear about this or pretty soon DC will be the scam capitol of the world :D