Many of us have a great aunt or a grandfather
who has fallen for the classic Nigerian prince e-mail scam. Most of us shake our heads in disbelief when
we hear of people who forked over hundreds of dollars to an unknown sender with questionable
grammar pretending to be royalty. But perhaps we shouldn’t be so quick to
judge their decision-making skills. Because between 1995 and 1998, an entire Brazilian
bank fell victim to such a scam and paid out $242 million in cash to invest in a Nigerian
airport..(pause)...that didn’t exist! How could this have happened? And how did the scammer eventually end up
getting arrested for murder? We mobilized our Internet scam task force
to find out. The country of Nigeria has unfortunately been
associated with many instances of Internet fraud, now commonly known as 419 fraud. However, one man, Emmanuel Nwude, committed
the biggest such Internet scam starting in 1995, before it was cool. At that point, the Internet was still in its
infancy, and people were somewhat more naive about online scam artists. To give you an idea of how long ago 1995 was
in Internet years, Netscape Navigator was the web browser of choice. We’ll remind you that Netscape Navigator,
just like AltaVista and GeoCities, is now extinct. So back to the biggest Internet con of all
time - who was the man behind it? Emmanuel Nwude had surprisingly respectable
roots. In the early 1990s, Nwude was living out a
stable, prosperous life as Director of the Union Bank of Nigeria, with several controlling
stakes in other banks and institutions. For most people, such a prestigious and relatively
well-paid position would have probably sufficed as far as life goals are concerned. However, Nwude was not your average person. One day, Nwude decided that instead of overseeing
accounts and loans and whatever else a bank director does, he would instead sell an airport
to an international bank. A grand, fully functional airport to be built
in Abuja, the Nigerian capital. The only problem: no such airport existed,
and no such airport was being planned. This didn’t stop Nwude, who decided that
he had to impersonate someone even more prestigious than himself in order for his scam to work. So he used his insider banking knowledge and
access to classified documents to pass himself off as Paul Ogwuma, the Governor of the Central
Bank of Nigeria. The Central Bank is the top financial authority
in the entire country, and someone passing himself off as the bank’s governor would
undoubtedly engender trust in a foreign investor. So Nwude, posing as Ogwuma, approached a Brazilian
named Nelson Sakaguchi to propose this airport transaction. Sakaguchi wasn’t just anyone; he was a Director
at Banco Noroeste, one of the biggest banking institutions in Brazil, based in the mega
city of Sao Paulo. Nwude told Sakaguchi that the airport would
cost around $242 million to build, so he would need the banker to fork over $191 million
in cash and $51 million in outstanding interest. Though it might seem that Nwude was asking
for a lot, the expected profits would have quickly eclipsed any hesitations about cost. In fact, given what most airports cost and
eventually make, Sakaguchi thought he was getting a pretty good deal. In 1995, Abuja had a population of 525,000
that was rapidly growing at a rate of about 10% per year. The city was attracting lots of people as
it had replaced Lagos as Nigeria’s capital just four years before. Building an airport in Nigeria’s new capital
city, in an increasingly interconnected country, with a rapidly swelling population, seemed
like good sense. To give one example, Denver International
Airport, which services a city of 619,000, just over Abuja’s population back then,
made $976.4 million in 2016 - the last year for which data is available. During the same year, Denver airport cost
around $777 million to operate, meaning it recorded a profit of just under $200 million
dollars for one year. This also explains why your 3-day-old ham
and cheese sandwich at your last layover cost $20 to reluctantly eat. Taking these potential figures and profitability
into account, it’s easy to see why Sakaguchi was intrigued by the idea of investing in
an airport. It probably also helped that Nwude told Sakaguchi
if he invested before the airport was fully built, he would personally get a $10 million
commission in addition to dividends from the airport’s profits. It further helped that since Sakaguchi was
a banker, the $242 million he would be investing wasn’t really his own money, but rather
that of his clients and investors. As multiple economic crises have shown us,
bankers invest in terrible concepts quite easily when it’s not their own money they
have to worry about. To clinch the business deal and get his commission,
Sakaguchi handed over the $191 million in cash. It’s unclear if he never got around to researching
anything related to the deal, such as if Abuja had any plans whatsoever to build an airport,
or he had some suspicions but overlooked them in favor of a $10 million commission. Sakaguchi continued to pay out the interest
until 1998, as this incredibly long and slow three year bank heist continued. In fact, the first sense that something was
wrong came only towards the very end of the con. Spain’s powerful Santander Bank had plans
to buy out Noroeste. During a joint board meeting in December of
1997, Santander executives saw that half of Noroeste’s capital was in the Cayman Islands,
completely unmonitored. As the Cayman Islands are basically a punchline
for shady business dealings, this raised some alarms. Santander initiated an investigation into
the accounts and where the money was going, an investigation that reached out from Brazil
to Britain, Switzerland, the US, and Nigeria. Eventually, when both Santander executives
and Sakaguchi discovered the truth, that the Abuja Airport was merely a dream, it was too
late; Noroeste had been scammed. In 2001, even after being bought out by Santander,
Banco Noroeste completely collapsed. Nwude, along with accomplices Emmanuel Ofolue,
Nzeribe Okoli, Obum Osakwe, Christian Ikechukwu Anajemba and his wife Amaka Anajemba, had
already disappeared. However, in 2002, Nigerian President Olusegun
Obasanjo along with the Nigerian Parliament created an Economic and Financial Crimes Commission
to try to clamp down on corruption and financial scams in Nigeria. In February of 2004, Nwude and his associates,
with the exception of Christian Anajemba, who had been assassinated, were all arrested
and charged in the Abuja High Court. The charges were as follows: 86 counts of
“fraudulently seeking advance fees” and 15 counts of bribery. The defendants all pleaded not guilty. Perhaps understandably, due to their history,
High Court Judge Lawal Gumi warned them not to bribe any of the court staff, as the repercussions
would be even more severe. Eventually, Gumi threw the case out and transferred
it to the Lagos High Court. There are different reports as to why Gumi
did this. Some people allege that Gumi got wind of Nwude
bribing local officials and court staff anyway, and thought the case would have a better chance
of a fair trial in Lagos. Other reports indicate that Gumi moved the
case to the capital’s high court as the crime was not committed in Abuja, and technically
not in his jurisdiction. In Lagos, Nwude, the man who apparently never
learns his lesson, attempted to bribe the head of the Economic and Financial Crimes
Commission, Nuhu Ribadu. Thankfully, Ribadu refused, and all this did
is earn Nwude an additional charge of bribery in his final trial. It appears Nwude and his accomplices were
still throwing all the Hail Mary passes they could think of, as during the trial a bomb
scare required the courthouse to be evacuated for some time. It’s not clear if this was an escape attempt
of some sort, but nothing came of it. Eventually, after Sakaguchi took the stand
and embarrassingly testified that he had bought a non-existent airport from the accused men,
Nwude and his co-conspirator Okoli pleaded guilty, hoping to get a lighter sentence. The Ikeja High Court judge in Lagos found
Nwude and his associates guilty of 86 counts of fraudulently seeking advance fees, and
the accompanying charges of bribery. Even though Nwede was sentenced on five counts
of five years in prison each, meaning 25 years in total, the sentences were served concurrently. In other words, Nwude was only really sentenced
to 5 years in prison in addition to paying a $10 million fine, and having his stolen
assets returned to his victim. Nwude served just two of those years before
being released in 2006. Then, because crime apparently does pay if
you’re lucky and brazen enough, Nwude sued for the return of some of his assets after
his release. He maintained that he had acquired some of
the money taken from him before his offenses were committed. The courts ended up returning the completely
reasonable sum of $167 million to Nwude. By this time you might be thinking - but wait,
didn’t you guys mention something about a murder? What happened there? Well, on August 19, 2016, over 200 people
attacked the town of Ukpo. The reason for the attack was an ongoing land
dispute with the neighboring community of Agabana. Multiple people were killed in the attack,
including four policemen and security guard Emmanuel Okafor. The plot for the attack was hatched in the
Owelle Inn in Agabana, which was owned by Nwude, now a chief in the local Agabana community. Anambra State Police Command accused Emmanuel
Nwude of inciting and leading the attack. He was arrested yet again, but this time on
more serious charges. Nwude was taken into custody on 27 charges
of murder and attempted murder. Here is where events become truly confusing. Some reports came out in Nigerian newspapers
alleging that another powerful, rich Nigerian man had in fact paid off Anambra officials
to pursue and arrest Nwude. Reports up until 2017 place Nwude in Awka
prison, awaiting trial. Apparently, further charges were then brought
against him as he was found to have conspired with two others to tamper with one of the
properties the court initially ordered him to forfeit to his victims in 2004. Thanks to these findings, on March 2, 2018,
Nwude was arraigned on 15 charges of forgery and dealing in forfeited property. Nwude and his defense lawyer made a plea to
be granted bail, as Nwude alleged he was preparing for a serious prostate cancer surgery later
in the month. The presiding judge, Justice Dada, noted that
though this was a serious claim, the fact that Nwude was a lifelong conman who had provided
not a single scrap of proof that any cancer surgery was scheduled to take place, created
some doubts for her. She then promptly denied him bail. However, there seem to be no reports of further
developments in the forgery or the murder case. In fact, the only recent news stories to have
emerged about Emmanuel Nwude indicate he is still in the Awka area, but is now Chief Emmanuel
Nwude, as he has become president-general of the Ugbene town union. There is no mention of further charges, trials,
or jail time after 2018. As for why, no one but Nwude probably knows. For those wondering, an airport was finally
built in Abuja in 2000, and opened in 2002. Currently, the Nnamdi Azikiwe International
Airport serves almost 5 million passengers a year. Unsurprisingly, Emmanuel Nwude has no involvement
with this airport. Emmanuel Nwude’s $242 million scam is currently
considered the third biggest bank fraud in history. The details of how he managed to convince
a respected bank director to invest in a non-existent airport may be sealed in court documents,
but the sheer scale and ambition of this con have made him infamous. The complete lack of information as to how
Nwude seems to have dodged his most recent charges of murder and forgery and has calmly
returned to his life as a town chief has created an even bigger mystery, for which no one seems
to have any good answers. What do you think happened? Let us know! And now that you’ve reached the end and
sworn to yell at your relatives to never click on scam e-mails again, why not keep watching
some cool videos! Click this video here, or maybe this other
one instead!
