Meet the scammers breaking hearts and stealing billions online | Four Corners

[Music] seriously [Music] maria exposto thought she'd found true love online instead she was ensnared in an elaborate international crime network [Music] the sydney grandmother known to her family as bella was sentenced to death last year for drug trafficking this is out of character it's not bella belly's a devoted mom a devoted wife but drugs no not my mother she was a textbook romance scam victim she was not someone that would get herself involved knowingly in any way in drug trafficking maria exposto fell in love with a man who didn't exist she believed she was talking to captain daniel smith an american special forces soldier stationed in afghanistan in fact she was seduced by criminals using stolen photos of a retired british naval officer in reality maria was talking to probably more than one criminal probably a gang of criminals most likely from what i've looked at in this case west africans and in my view probably ghanaian west africans as well hello abc news here with me maria spoke to us from prison in malaysia about how she was duped and then he make me fall in love with him because of this bullshitting thing i want her love to flourish with unrequited fire and passion while we're apart i yearn to look into your eyes the way that lovers do and hear you whisper i love you the scammers bombarded her with declarations of love followed by pleas for money i've searched my heart and found out that you're not happy in your married life therefore i want to ask your hand in marriage thank you my love for your answer i'm so happy my love i will love and cherish you like no other man when are you going out honey what about the western union when are you going to send the money she'll just give me a phone just go i can send this money to my friend through western union and i'll just be like okay sure but then i started reading them after a while and they were going to uh one place was ghana and i'm just like what friend does she have there maria sent more than 18 000 to ghana within a year she was broke but the scammers weren't finished with her what happens with victims who have been scammed is they get put on a suckers list and being on a sucker's list means that that's sold on the dark web and other criminals will use it in maria's case i think that's probably what's happened is that perhaps other people have either got involved that have joined these gangs or her details have been sold off to the next highest bidder to be able to be used as a drug mule maria was lured to shanghai to sign daniel smith's retirement papers she was met by a man who said he was an army colleague he gave her a bag to take back to australia in transit in malaysia customs officers found more than a kilo of the drug ice sewn into the lining i entered this case purely professionally to examine this as an expert witness and i didn't make up my mind until i went through all the data available and until i interviewed maria she didn't have to have her bags checked she volunteered she said here i have my bags and have a look i've looked at this case for so long now and in so much detail it's one of those things that you think um oh sorry i didn't expect to get emotional about it you just think if you could take that moment back again for her you know professor monica whittie is a global authority on the psychology of romance scams the criminals involved in this are definitely masters of manipulation this is their job right and they're very good at it and they're very proud of being good at it as well well i think they're looking for people that are vulnerable they're looking for people that are probably to some extent lonely they're looking for engagement and that is why they utilize social media they're organized they're very well organized and they're very well resourced the rampant theft of images is central to the business of scamming retired us colonel brian denney has had his image stolen and used in thousands of fake social media and dating profiles military personnel are uh are highly regarded uh we're seen as trustworthy dependable so over the course of the last two years i've reported over 3 000 accounts to facebook of scammers using my pictures to steal money from from women around the globe brian denney is among countless military personnel whose photos have been used by scammers this is being done at kind of an industrial scale and you know how do you stop it what do you do about it these are thieves that are using images to take advantage of people on a global scale brian denny has trolled through groups on facebook where scammers trade skills and fake identities they offer facebook profiles for sale they offer pictures of uniformed servicemen for sale they offer the you know the back story uh and kind of how you get started so it's all right there it's it's in plain sight it's not hidden the fraudsters advertise so-called formats day by day scripts to run their scans they sell photo editing skills in secret groups on facebook's instant messaging service whatsapp they trade bank accounts for laundering stolen money i'm angry to say the least it's hugely frustrating knowing that you're you're you're talking uh to a company like facebook and you're working to help people you know kind of uh them enforce their own community standards and yet on facebook they're advertising there are people that are advertising hey this is how you take advantage of people [Music] each week brian denny hears from women across the world who've been sucked in by the scammers they are trying to confirm or deny that i'm a guy that they've had a relationship with and have sent money to they've committed everything all their financial resources you know and now to find out that it's not true it was all fake and they've been duped emotionally uh and they're out large sums of money i mean it's it's traumatic it's dramatic i was totally in love with him totally besotted i'd never loved anyone like i loved him i really you know and he's of course it was brian's looks and i was just yeah i thought he was i thought all my dreams had come true i only found out about three weeks ago who is a 29 year old nigerian queenslander cherelle music was seduced by a scammer using brian denny's images over two years she sent him forty thousand dollars it was all borrowed i borrowed it out of my bank card i made a personal loan and then when that run out i started getting them off um cash converters [Music] hey how are you i feel like we need introductions on with real point but uh i'm brian i'm sherelle hey cheryl how are you good i've been in love with you for two years [Laughter] yeah this is the first time brian denny has come face to face with a victim quite frankly i wanted to meet and say i'm sorry that this happened to you and you were taking advantage of but i don't blame you in any i do i honestly don't blame you in any sense of the word and i don't even really hate the scammer or anything you know what i mean but he he gave you i tell you something now he gave you some service he has been no no i'm not kidding you he has been the most beautiful person that god ever put breath into it except maybe for the part where for two years he pretended to be me you know that that that you could say would kind of put me wrong there but uh you know this is big business they look for people that they can that are big hearted and generous and and you fit the bill yep science because it's going forward all right both sherelle and brian are devoted to exposing the criminals tactics these guys are thieves these guys are cockroaches and when you shine a light on them cockroaches scattered i just want to have other women who are getting men and there are thousands of them getting men talking to them romancing them and then asking them for money please don't give it to them because they don't love you they don't care about you they are only after the money [Applause] four corners travel to ghana in west africa to find out who's behind the booming business of online fraud this former slave colony is one of africa's fastest growing economies there are more phones here than people and internet is cheap so online crime is easy money and authorities are battling to keep up those who indulge in this are the perpetrators are not they are most of them are unemployed but they are very sharp they are very intelligent because it takes someone with an intellect to sit down and even fancy how to get into this activity and also to blindfold or put with someone to believe in whatever story he's putting across many of the scammers start out in internet cafes like this one they're known as cafe boys what are you guys up to in here on the computer you came to check out facebook yeah and a lot of times social media i noticed though that on your computers you all have female names jessica mary why why do you log in with female names [Music] and they're remarkably candid about what they do i mean some of them can give you two thousand dollars maybe you tell them you want five thousand dollars or five thousand pounds of 5000 australian dollars do you chat with men in australia no oh yeah i can show you the chats sure and i can see here he says wanna play now i'm horny you you you you mean like one player video comes with me video okay yeah the video come with me to do what he thinks you're a woman so what do you do with him does he show you himself naked he doesn't see anything on the videos [Music] this 27 year old who calls himself kwaku hustles for his living [Music] on a good night he makes the equivalent of twenty dollars selling perfume [Music] it's a fraction of what he can make online basically they call us fraud boys or game boys because we do fraud to get money we scam from his tiny flat kwaku and his friend who goes by the nickname skadoo use stolen photos to create fake identities to fool their victims i am johnny and i am a military man in the u.s okay so sometimes i'm i'm in palestine sometimes i'm in iraq and and we are helping keeping peace in that country because there's war going on and all that so that's my main occupation online yeah so i search for clients i want some somebody to to be my lover yeah my fiance and all that he said you search for clients what's that the word client is used for people you meet online you don't like to use the word victim no no no a client is somebody a business partner who will maybe we'll bring money or something that's why you use the word clients some are divorced and some uh their husbands are not dead and and all that so the best targets are people who are divorced who are divorced or we don't yes their husbands yeah yes kwaku's current target is a mexican woman in the u.s i think she doesn't have that education where she also she's not fluent in the english like that so i was lucky enough to meet somebody who was it wasn't but i proposed to her and we're getting along but it seems i wanted some capital so i asked her for money and oh i think she sent me money and about two thousand dollars yeah kwaku returns a call from the woman while we're filming and pretends his webcam isn't working i really want to come around this christmas so i can come and see you yeah my friend booked a flight ticket i'm not hearing from my friend anymore it's really hard times here baby i'm trying to video chat with you so you can see me but the camera is not it's not working properly i don't know can you see me now um oh my god i love you baby i'm gonna call you back i gotta call you back okay baby yeah oh my god that's my tits [Music] i'm gonna call you back later at night so we can have fun okay okay all right i love you bye she's falling in love with the voice because the same voice that i i i propose to hear the same voice that i tell her she's beautiful the same voice that when i'm making love to her you know sometimes i back it off with when you're having sex those voices ah yeah you know she she likes that you know women like men who are caring you understand if you're not giving them money oh you always call them how you doing oh i wanted to check on you have you eaten all those stuffs like pampering that way you understand she's there she's online looking for a partner maybe it's been long since she met someone like that he's reluctant someone pampered it he's belonging someone told her sweet things you understand sometimes you be talking to the person and you you can't even feel pity for the person wow this person she's crying and all that you feel pity but you too you need money are you committing crime no no i don't see it i just sent me a crime because it's online i'm i'm trying to get money and the same the same person is also trying to get money for them it's purely business and taking what's owed to them the white people they came down here to colonize us two court belongs to us they sent our great great grandfathers they motivated them treated them like slaves you understand they did a lot of harm to them you understand so they've done as bad before and we think it's time to pay them back superstition runs deep in ghana [Music] at a shrine on the outskirts of the capital nana agrada casts spells for her customers to help them make money i am a fetus priestess i am a fittest priestess she's also a businesswoman cafe boys pay nana to deliver them the power to manipulate their victims nana and her assistant show us how it works me what's your consultation fatal what are you saying hundreds okay [Music] [Music] so he came to me that he brought some white people to me two ladies and one man the boy wants them to send him some amount because he has been asking money from her and he but they have not paid the money so when he came i was doing it for him so i gave him some soap to go and use it so that when he is using it to bath he will say anything that he wants the white lady or the white man to do for him so that is what i was doing for him ghana's economic and organized crime office is working with the fbi and interpol to confront the cyber fraud industry [Applause] head of prosecution's abuser says the cafe boys are only entry-level criminals [Applause] these are just unemployed youth who will try to do all that they can to sustain a living but the big guys will never go to the internet cafe they will sit in the comfort of their rooms have their mobile telephony broadband network and do it in their own comfort even most of the bad guys or the big fishes put out or send a small voice on an errand to undertake preliminary activities for them so they graduate from that particular little voice to the big guys in town we've spent the last two days abu essa says formidable international crime organisations have taken hold in ghana we have nigerian nationals and other west african nationals who come here and definitely they have their ghanian collaborators or counterparts who indulge in this and then they share ideas making the source of escape that's even to track them what started in west africa has grown into a global network scammers here are trading their victims with criminal syndicates which are exploiting them for money laundering and drug trafficking police are only starting to understand how sophisticated and far-reaching this is he's still looking back yeah yeah you see him there though yeah i know he's on our six he stopped yeah i got him in the mirror oh yeah no he's just looking for siggies in toronto canada detectives michael kelly and tim trotter have uncovered the inner workings of a global crime network which has grown out of the internet cafes of west africa i guess we kind of got what we wanted it's alleged that they are involved in everything from fraud and money laundering to drug trafficking to human trafficking to prostitution rings all manners of criminality [Music] at the centre of their investigation was this man akahoman iguodozi the canadian nigerian jewel national was arrested at toronto airport in 2014 when customs found him with a fake credit card he was placed under arrest by peel regional police here in canada and i wound up writing a search warrant for the electronic devices found in his possession their contents after examination opened us up to the innermost workings of of the organization they say igadoisi's chat history revealed he was coordinating a vast fraud and money laundering network it was thousands upon thousands of lines with him and communicating with other conspirators all around the world about fraud scams of all types targeting victims all over the world talking about how to control their victims how to best carry out the fraud scams and it gave us a real sense of the the scope and scale of how large it was and the the the nature and how big the operations were that uh mr iguodosi and his associates were carrying out again targeting people from from canada to the united states to europe to even mentioning australians there were emails that indicated their ability to have peer review of each other's criminality and then there were exchanges of suggestions of no no no use this letter it's better use this hallmark on your documents it's much more effective and so you realize okay we're up we're up against a machine here one of his colleagues here reaches out to him and says brother can you get me an hsbc bank account for shanghai china igadoisi was the treasurer of the canada zone of an organization called the neo-black movement of africa also known as black axe it started out as a university fraternity in nigeria in the 70s likes to be known for charitable works but it's earned a reputation in nigeria as a violent cult they put on this happy face of a social political brotherhood and but back home the very same members of that organization would happily post on facebook pictures of being people being slaughtered in markets hacked to death out front of their school the nigerian contemporary media was full of accounts of people cult members or members of the neil black movement executing friend info alike black axe has spread to 26 countries including italy where it's recognized by authorities as the nigerian mafia for running drug human and sex trafficking networks mike kelly and tim trotter discovered the group has become a global giant in online fraud what we found was something very unique in criminal organizations and we found an organization that had strong central control that had feeders everywhere and then would uh take in all this information and essentially assess and find the best practice best criminal practice with which to victimize people all over the world the detectives say igadoisi channeled funds through a worldwide network he was directing individuals to send money to china to malaysia to japan to south korea to throughout europe uh literally all across the globe he was the plug-in for an entire network of people behind him that were out there committing crimes and targeting people all across the world and were coming to him to get bank accounts to launder those funds quickly get me a bank account so i can receive money from this victim here or another country around the world he really was a real keystone in the world of transnational fraud and money laundering you are being charged with one more charge of laundering the proceeds of crime iguodoisi was jailed in canada for fraud he's also wanted by the fbi which has indicted him on money laundering charges over an alleged 5 billion dollar fraud scheme well we in law enforcement have been in dealing with the elements of west african organized crime for quite some time but i don't think that we've really pieced it together on the truly transnational stage that it truly deserves west african organized crime might be the largest transnational organized crime entity out there but nobody's really heard of it [Music] well what the toronto police service really did was demonstrate that there is this international network of lots of money with lots of frauds and interconnected parts i think the initial reaction is to think of people sending these stupid emails of the nigerian prince and they don't realize from that that you're really talking about very violent criminals that are very organized and forcing this stuff on a global organized scale they're not they're very smart they're very organized and there's huge numbers of them former u.s federal trade commission director steve baker has watched west african crime organizations move into massive corporate scams in what's called business email compromise crime groups hack company email accounts somebody this is say the chief financial officer will get an email that looks like it's from her boss saying gee instead of playing the supplier the normal way this time we want you to wire that money to this other bank account so she believes that she's responding to the person she works for and she's really sending the money off to the crooks without realizing it west african cyber crime is the biggest threat that we see on the internet today we're looking at over 12 billion dollars in five years it eclipses all the other threats that we've seen that are financially motivated american cyber intelligence firm crowdstrike investigates the email scams and finds the money trail quickly runs cold so this is the social media profile of one of the attackers that we've been tracking here so you can see uh they've found romance scam victims are often tricked into laundering the stolen funds the difference in the picture they use the accounts of these romance victims that becomes kind of the highway that the money takes to go from the victim to the criminal gone unchecked this is not going to go away i think some of the things we've been seeing from law enforcement over the last year are great there's been a number of arrests in ghana in the u.s in canada in the uk there are arrests all over the world occurring and we need to keep the pressure on the cyber syndicates have proliferated all over the world including here in australia and there's one case that shows just how brazen the scammers have become it involves a romance scam victim who was drawn into a global drug smuggling syndicate and it was operating right under the noses of australian authorities here at the villawood detention center in sydney in april 2014 the new south wales crime commission and police launched this raid at the villawood detention center i'm currently present at the middle detention center located on murray road in villawood we're here for the purpose of executing two search prompts our commonwealth search warrants 2014 they were looking for evidence of a global drug smuggling plot using a scam victim as a mule uh you can see a slit in the mattress if you lift that up it was it slid down a little bit but um you still might be able to see it in there it's a mobile phone numerous uh persons names and and phone numbers this one's email addresses um a lot being international numbers [Music] 7 26 pm on the target of the raid was nigerian patrick nuecki a convicted drug importer who'd been in immigration detention more than a year fighting deportation to my right i have durachukwu patrick noweki who was here at bankstown police station currently under arrest in relation to the allegation that he was participating in coordinating and aiding the importation of the border controlled substance namely uh cocaine nuecki had been under investigation for five months as he conspired with nigerian contacts around the world they seem to be like a vertically integrated company it was an organization that sourced the drugs found the couriers um facilitated their transport collected the drugs at the end it was a a world tried and i think well practiced approach nueki's mule was american disability pensioner peter strand who'd lost 400 000 to romance scams you know i was hoodwinked i was uh coerced convinced or otherwise led to believe that something was gonna happen that never happened so he was identified as the type of gullible person who was vulnerable to this type of manipulation police intercepted nuecki's communications on 10 mobile services he used secretly inside villawood he called contacts in south africa india brazil and nigeria setting up the drug smuggling operation [Music] [Music] because he was broke sick and frail [Music] [Music] [Music] his accomplice in nigeria discussed the scam used to suck stranded [Music] it was supposed to be a money cleaning cash cleaning agent of some type now supposedly this cash that i was going to be getting was marked with some type of die which needed to be cleaned off in order for me to get clean cash it was a bizarre and um to an outsider unbelievable um thing but he wasn't the only one who fell for it on the 29th of april 2014 peter strand flew into sydney international airport carrying a bag he'd brought from brazil i was in in the transit area and someone came to me in a uniform and said is this your name i said yes he said follow me why am i going through this customs officers found two protein powder containers holding about two and a half kilograms of cocaine in his bag has anything to do who may be using evidence do you understand that okay and then when they opened it and tested it and told me what it was i was in complete shock complete shock i i had no idea what to say i was just i can't believe this is happening you know i have been arrested today for the invitation of a commercial quantity of the liverpool drug into australia and for possession of that drug and yes what can you tell me about the allegation i had no idea what was in the bag whatsoever peter strand was one of 44 drug mules arrested at australian airports after being drawn in by online criminal syndicates after 18 months in jail strand was found not guilty his puppet master patrick nowecki was convicted of drug importation and will be sentenced next month it was extremely well organized that's mind-boggling absolutely mind-boggling and let alone out of australia but out of a detention facility how is that possible how is that possible five months ago in a separate case police arrested another nigerian detainee at villarwood who was allegedly running a 3 million dollar fraud syndicate from inside we just need to be aware and continually be on on the lookout for new scams as they come across there's no doubt these organized criminal groups west africans as well as everybody else will change their motorcycle and again will start to target australians in a big way [Music] in ghana online scamming is a way of life for many who are poor and unemployed they want to lie you've got to survive if you want me to do that put it away it might be somehow painful seeing someone who is old enough to be on what are going through that by the bottom like this we mean we've got to survive thank you all right thank you very much let's give it up for me man some see it as a legitimate way to build their future [Music] [Applause] a big musician worldwide and a businessman with companies and employ employ the youth some who are not working so i get a crack and create jobs for the youth because that's the main thing that is holding us back with the youth that's why we are indulging ourselves in this scamming and all that as long as scammers are hooking victims they'll be feeding what the fbi calls some of the most aggressive and expansionist crime organizations in [Music] they will keep going until they rob you blind they will keep going until they take everything from you as long as people send money to people they don't know uh this kind of thing will continue to happen this isn't something that you can wait out it's not gonna go away this is in our neighborhoods this is our friends this is our neighbors these are people we know this is on our block this is in our apartment building and they and the total amounts of money going out are staggering coming to terms with the fact that these really are huge organized worldwide enterprises is something that i think the police around the world are still are still learning about and we've got a long way to go if we're ever going to do something effective [Applause] yes it's always good to have fun there is nothing wrong with having fun

Channel: ABC News In-depth

Views: 7,391,754

Keywords: West Africa, online dating, dating scams, catfishing, drug trafficking, drug mules, romance scammer, catfish, romance scam, scam victims, global crime ring, money laundering, stealing money online, four corners, abc news, Australia, online lovers, online relationship, ghana, cybercrime, online fraud

Id: U4kCN7TZ6us

Length: 43min 2sec (2582 seconds)

Published: Mon Feb 11 2019