from Asahi shimbun.
09/20/2007
THE ASAHI SHIMBUN
Those meddlesome e-mails from Nigerians or other strangers willing to share their wealth were likely part of a global fraud operation that laundered its ill-gotten gains in Japan.
Nigerian and Japanese individuals have been arrested in Chiba and Saitama prefectures on suspicion of opening bank accounts through illicit means to launder the money, police said.
Police said the suspects have been connected to the so-called 419 fraud named after an article of the Nigerian criminal law.
The fraud started in Africa, mostly in Nigeria, and spread to the United States and Europe in the 1980s and later to Japan. Because of wide reach of the Internet, the scam has created victims all over the world.
There are many variations to the fraud, but the most common type involves unsolicited e-mail promising huge returns and secret business deals.
After the victims transfer commission charges and other expenses to a designated bank account abroad, the fraud ring disappears.
Police said two groups in Japan were connected through the 419 scam, and used accounts in Japan for international fraud and money laundering.
According to investigators, the two groups opened accounts at major and local banks and credit unions in Chiba and Saitama prefectures and Tokyo after the end of 2004 under the names of group members and dummy companies.
The number of accounts reached about 140, containing about 2 billion yen ($17.3 million) remitted from the United States, Canada, Britain, Australia and Switzerland.
One transfer alone involved 60 million yen, the investigators said.
After the prefectural police departments consulted the Federal Bureau of Investigation, they learned that the large remittances included money defrauded under the pretext of charges for attorneys over inheritance and other cases.
Both of the groups withdrew the funds at banks and convenience stores immediately after the money was sent to the accounts. The funds were then transferred to accounts in the United States, Canada, Britain and China.
The groups were also found to have repeatedly called the same phone numbers in the United States and Canada. Investigators suspect the group members received orders from fraud syndicates in those countries to withdraw the money.
The investigation in Japan began after a financial institution in the United States asked a bank in Saitama Prefecture in spring 2005 to freeze accounts that were likely being used in a fraud case.
In November last year, an oil company in South Africa reported to Chiba prefectural police that it had been targeted in a fraud and that the funds were to head to a designated bank account in the prefecture
Felix Steve Asabor, 40, and Christopher Ariri Noguchi, 39, both originally from Nigeria, surfaced as suspects in the police investigations.
Asabor was arrested by Saitama prefectural police and Noguchi, who has Japanese nationality, was arrested by Chiba prefectural police.
A senior National Police Agency official said remitting money to Japan is easy because identification and other security procedures are less strict here compared with the West.
In 2002, financial institutions reported 18,000 cases of transactions suspected of criminal involvement to the Financial Services Agency. The figure rose to 113,000 in 2006.(IHT/Asahi: September 20,2007)
http://www.asahi.com/english/Herald-...709200188.html