Australians are losing at least $36 million a year to Nigerian email fraudsters, according to the Queensland police’s fraud squad.
Detective Superintendent Brian Hay said Australia sends about $3 million a month to Nigeria, and that at least 80 percent was as the result of fraud.
Hay says the problem is actually bigger than that, with millions going to other countries apart from the West African nation, and that part of the problem is victims are reluctant to report incidents.
The state with the most victims is NSW “by a mile” according to Hay.
Queensland fraud officers recently contacted 139 people who had sent money to Nigeria and found 135 were the victims of fraud.
Nigerian scams are usually conducted by email and operate by encouraging people to send money away in the hope of a much greater return.
Scammers pose as lawyers or government workers who need an offshore account to park millions of dollars, but need a comparatively small advance from the Australian account holders to pay bribes and such to complete the transaction.
In others fraudsters set up profiles on dating sites using sexy pictures to encourage lonely and naïve Internet users to send money for plane tickets. Victims of these “romance scams” have lost up to $35,000.
In other scams, businesses are encouraged to invest in Nigerian oil projects. One recently lost $5 million.
One prominent Australian poet, Anne Fairbairn, fell victim to a scam where she was asked to send her email account login details to her provider, Yahoo.
The conmen then send emails to all her contacts in her name claiming she was stuck in Nigeria with no money and needed them to send $2500 to her via money transfer business Western Union.
"I get phone calls very regularly from concerned relatives saying, 'Look, I think my mother or my father is a victim of a scam, they won't listen to us. Could you please contact them and explore this situation for me?'" Detective Superintendent Hay told Fairfax.
But according to police even when victims are informed of the fraud they often continue sending money to the scammers out of sheer pride or embarrassment.
"Here they have this dream that their life is going to turn around, all their money problems are finished and they'll be able to have a future ... and we're smashing it against a brick wall. We're saying, 'Sorry, you're a victim and the hundreds of thousands of dollars that you've parted with has been lost,' " Detective Superintendent Hay said.
Australia is not alone with Britons believed to lose £150 million a year.
The scams have very real consequences with some victims attempting suicide, losing their businesses or experiencing marriage break up.
