Nigerian organized crime

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Nigerian organized crime, or Nigerian OC, may refer to a number of fraudsters, drug traffickers and racketeers of various sorts originating from Nigeria. Nigerian criminal gangs rose to prominence in the 1980s, owing much to the globalization of the world's economies and the high level of lawlessness already in the country.

1 Structure
2 Activities
- 2.1 419 scam
3 References
4 External links
5 See also

[edit] Structure

Criminal organizations from Nigeria typically do not follow the mafia-type model followed by other groups. They appear to be less formal and more organized along familial and tribal lines, thus making them less susceptible by infiltration from law enforcement. Police investigations are further hampered by the fact there are at least 75 distinct tribal languages in Nigeria. Other criminal gangs from Nigeria appear to be smaller-scale freelance operations ^[1].

[edit] Activities

Nigerian organized crime groups are active in at least 80 countries around the world, including the United States. They are heavily involved in drug trafficking, shipping heroin from Asian countries to Europe and America and cocaine from South America to Europe and South Africa. The large amounts of ethnic Nigerians in India, Pakistan and Thailand gives the gangs ready access to around 90% of the world's heroin. The money laundering that results from the drug trade has spread Nigerian OC groups to every continent population continent on Earth. Nigerian OC groups are also notorious for fraud, which lose American businesses between $1-2 billion a year. Such schemes are diverse and include car insurance, life insurance and credit card scams. ^[2]

[edit] 419 scam

For more details on this topic, see Advance fee fraud.

The 419 or Nigerian letter scam originating in the mid-eighties named after the subsection of the Nigerian penal code which criminalities the act of obtaining money by deception. The scam involves thousands of emails sent out to potential victims. The emails typically state there is a large amount of money that has been inherited or somehow acquired by the sender that needs the help of the reader in order to be accessed, in return for a percentage of the profits. The victims are then tricked into giving away bank account details, asked for increasing amounts of money or are robbed or kidnapped at a meeting point where they were supposed to meet the sender. Only a small percentage actually take the bait, but the sheer number of emails sent out is so great that a large profit is typically made by the criminals. It is estimated £200 million pounds are scammed this way from Britain. ^[3]