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Cyber Crime: Another Dimension By Muktar Garba Maigamo
This days computer virus such as Trojan horse Nukela my Doom A&B etc and other hacking activities are no longer a threat as every day new anti viral soft wares are profusely coming out to tackle the scourge of such viruses. But the plague of global networking now is the inglorious activities that has been gleefully perpetuated by con men which is even endangering the business world. Financial institutions are mostly at the receiving ends of these dishonest activities. Though one can say, with certain degree of complements that EFCC under Ribadu succeeded in stemming the tide. This crafty activities has now resurfaced in a more advanced ways as the fraudsters introduced a more sophisticated ways of swindling the public.
My young friend who scrapes through ABU Zaria (with 2:2) since 2006 had to face the vicissitude of life, driving from pillar to post seeking for job. Upon seeing his plight, I encouraged him to start searching for the job online. There from we became regular customers of cafe centers. We even blindly registered to one bogus www. Job available.com, until we were alerted that it belongs to the fraudsters after we paid 2,000 naira for membership. We were lull into the belief that my friend will get job as soon as we login. We spent almost 8 months surfing the internet seeking for job info. One day my desperate friend was even kobo less and anxiously wanted to browse. We just went to the café and complaint to the café owners. By virtue of the huge returns they realized from our constant subscription, they gave us free airtime. Instinctively we directly opened the inbox and saw that my friend had received notification message from yahoo Microsoft that he had emerged a winner of annual UK National lottery, with a reference number UK/104566789, and batch number UK/bch23452. That the lottery was dispassionately raffled and randomly selected the email addresses across the globe in which my friend emerged as one of the winner. Guess! He had scooped a whooping eight hundred and fifty thousand British pound sterling (850,000 00) “This is miraculous god sent relief” he yelled, “indeed every hardship must be accompanied with ease” I mumbled.
But in order for him (us) to claim the jumbo he had to call +447045721627. Or emailed ukn1844@yahoo.co.uk. The message was so well framed with a yahoo water mark and hyperlinks which defied any inklings of dubiosity. My friend promptly called one named Ian Kirk and Mrs Susan Moore whose name and addresses was given. For my fiend’s little surprise the racketeers demanded that a domiciliary account must be open with at least 100 000 naira so that the lashing package can be transferred with ease. Both of us could not smell a rat giving the fact that we were beguiled by the well decorated and richness of the message. My friend lay sleeplessly strategizing how to source the money while me too the spasm of positive shock wave through out the night made me to scaled my needs according to the preference to which I confidently whispered to my heart that I bade farewell to my previous hand to mouth life. My heart was saturated with my starry eyed calculations. In fact I, in my mind arranged the types of cars I will immediately assemble in my newly build mansion some where around Abuja if we claim the money. There are some posh cars our honorable member house of reps representing us uses that I admired most. Armada was on my first list, followed by Escalade, Murano jeep and super X class. All my illusory calculations were coterminous with my friend’s own during that night.
How ever he was only able to raise 40 000 naira mainly from loan and I, on my own part sold my fan and add up with my scholarship (4,500+4,500=9,000) that is my scholarship every year. As we gathered the amount we just headed to the café for more info concerning the mode of delivery. One man who was waiting for us to alight from the computer look askance at our inbox and quickly called our attention to the wide spread shabby internet activities by fraudsters. At first, we had a blind spot and suspected that the man wanted to hack into the reference numbers the Ian Kirk concealed to us. We surreptiously closed the inbox but the savior disabused our mind by showing us his own inbox inundated with such various notification messages from these tricksters. We were just astounded and bemused by what we saw and what we thought earlier.
Few days later my own inbox too was awash with such messages from so called Irish lottery, Royal Bank of Scotland, Hong Kong Treasury, Exto Inc, Irish National board etc. but the question is how does these crafty men carried these illegal activities without a trace. According to Global Network for Cyber solution 10 billion is lost annually by fraud and other allied practices. Other financial institutions had decried the immense lost they are recording by these dishonesty(s). our images in all ramifications has been battered to the extent that foreigners considered the Nigerian business environment uncongenial and they also made to believed every Nigerian is an incorrigible rogue, only that it is a matter of chance. A case of Madam Ndi Okereke is a clear testimony. This is a matter of national concern that needs urgent attention. Government, NGOs and other stake holders have to carry out a mass sensitization programs to the public so that they will be enlighten on the various tactics the fraudsters used to swindle the public. Also as a matter of urgency, the National assembly needs to pass a strict law that will deal with any culprit of cyber crime. The agencies created for combating such crimes must be equipped with the wherewithal so that they can trace every nook and corner of the hide outs.
As for me and my friend, if not supervened by that savior we would have become victims too.
MG Maigamo can be reach at the department of local govt & development studies, ABU Zaria, Congo campus
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