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Citigroup Banks Fall for $27 Million Nigerian Scam

by Tim Stevens on February 23, 2009 at 03:37 PM

Citigroup Banks Fall for $27 Million Nigerian Scam Over the years, we've covered many, many Nigerian scams -- the sort where you'll get an e-mail out of the blue indicating that someone in Nigeria (or another nearby country) will wire you some amount of money if you give them your account information. Naturally, these hackers are just trying to rip you off, and we're hoping that you're wise to their game. We're horrified to learn that officials at Citibank, however, have not wised up, acting on fake letters as if they were real, and actually wiring money to a series of accounts without proper authorization.

Have you ever been the victim of an online scam?
Yes3631 (22.3%)
No10844 (66.7%)
I'm not sure1786 (11.0%)


The scam was perpetrated by 37-year-old Paul Gabriel Amos, a Nigerian citizen living in Singapore. With the help of fraudulent documents, Amos asked Citibank to transfer $27 million from a Citibank account held by the National Bank of Ethiopia into 24 different accounts around the world, all of which he and fellow scammers controlled. Amos's misdeeds were thankfully detected, albeit after the transfer was complete; he was arrested when flying into Los Angeles, and is currently being held after being denied bail by a federal judge in Manhattan. If convicted, he could spend the next 30 years in jail.

As for Citibank, well, we guess its latest misstep will just be covered by taxpayer-funded bailouts! [From: The Business Insider]

Tags: banks, citibank, nigeria, nigerian scam, NigerianScam, security, top

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