If you have been following the news, you must have heard BBC reporting about scammers. The network reported that a Nigerian man behind thousands of online scams around the world was arrested in the southern oil city of Port Harcourt, Interpol alleges. BBC wrote ” The 40-year-old man, known only as “Mike” is alleged to head a network of 40 individuals behind global scams worth more than $60m (£45m). His operations involved using malware to take over systems to compromise emails, as well as romance scams. Nigeria’s anti-fraud agency was also involved in the arrest “.
“In one case, a target was conned into paying out $15.4 m (£11m),” Interpol said in a statement.
The rate of scamming in Nigeria and other African countries have seen a sharp increase. It is reported “Mike” also allegedly ran a money laundering network in China, Europe, and the US. The network compromised email accounts of small to medium-sized businesses around the world including in Australia, Canada, India, Malaysia, Romania, South Africa, Thailand and the United States- reported BBC.
In line with this, money transfers agencies have suspended all transfers to Nigeria, BaretaNews noted. This will greatly affect Nigeria considering the difficult financial times the government of Nigeria is currently going through. The millions of Nigerians out of the country sent billions of Naira into their country through remittances and business deals.
Cameroonians are already afraid this might affect neighboring Cameroon as we have seen the rise in the number of scammers lately who have evolved from the traditional scamming to e-scamming. BaretaNews received a message from a concerned friend in the USA who tried sending money to Nigeria. This was the response
Money transfer service to Nigeria suspended
Dear Bessong,
As you may have seen in the media, almost all international money transfer operators have been forced to suspend transfers to Nigeria.Unfortunately, WorldRemit is among them. This has happened because of drastic and unforeseen action taken by the Central Bank of Nigeria. Our local partners have been told they can no longer process transfers to bank accounts. There was no advance warning that this was going to happen and the money transfer companies affected had no opportunity to appeal. WorldRemit believes this action to be unfair and we are currently contesting it.
In the meantime, we are not able to accept new money transfer requests to Nigeria. We are working to complete all pending transfers. In the limited number of cases where this is not possible, we will communicate with you and arrange a refund. Our mobile airtime service is unaffected. If you have previously sent money to Nigeria with us, we will provide updates on the situation by email.
Kind regards,
The WorldRemit team
BaretaNews, however, applauds the government of Buhari to fight corruption. It is a means to clean the image of Nigeria. BaretaNews pleads with Cameroon scammers to stop scamming and engage in real business. If Cameroon were to be affected, considering the remittances Cameroonians send to Cameroon will stop and this might cause hardship to Cameroonian families. It will affect their business too. However, if Cameroon were to be affected, the scammers would have contributed to bringing Biya down, because a civil strife will start once Cameroonians stopped receiving remittances abroad. Would Biya leave this to happen?
God is still saying something.
