How It Works...

People with access to NITEL's switchboards tap into phone lines before and during phone calls and often divert the calls to a different location.
Then someone answers and poses as a relative or close friend of the person you are calling or sometimes as employees of the person.

The person who answers the phone typically tells the caller that the loved one has been in a car crash and a Nigerian citizen was killed.

As a result, the loved one is not only in intensive care but also under arrest and because there is no one else here to help ,
they need the urgent transmission of funds (sometimes through Western Union) to pay for:

Medical expenses

Bail

The individuals then try to get as much information from the shocked relative, phone number, fax number, bank details and spend the rest of the day, calling you every hour to add to the story and build up the hype and suspense.

They have also been known to give contact details for themselves, one of which was traced to a police station here in Lagos and another to a store on Lagos Island.

They seem to be able to tap into official and residential numbers at any time of day. They even seem to have been able to tap into embassy lines.
Primary targets seem to be institutions with high levels of exposure to foreigners and a very high frequency of international calls.
Although small companies have also had experiences.

The calls are characterised, sometimes by an initial disconnection in the middle of a valid conversation with ones' relatives.
An attempt at reconnecting will then be diverted to a bogus number where the story is spun and the victim strung out.
In most instances, the story is so distressing that the victim does not have the presence of mind to question its accuracy.

Example

In one instance, a lady actually had a nervous breakdown before she was able to confirm that her son (on his first trip to Nigeria) had not been involved in a horrific accident. It was five long hours before she was finally able to get though to her son's hosts only to find that he was on the beach happily sunning himself, but even that generated a mini scare down here as the hosts immediately believed something might have happened to him at the beach, prompting a high speed car chase.

What Do You Do....?

If you live abroad and call Nigeria often, take extra caution and inform those you call of the scam and DO NOT give out any personal information to strangers.
Also do not take any action without confirming the story.

If you are in Nigeria, please inform those who call you of this scam.
Have another contact number (friend, relative, etc) where your callers can get information about your whereabouts.

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