Mum-of-three jailed in $45m. bank scam
Wednesday 22nd April 2009, 2:30PM BST.
DS Andy Whitton at Batif Bureau de Change, where Vuyiswa Voli attempted to exchange $7000 in forged currency.
A Mother-OF-THREE tried to con a bank into paying out $45m. after getting caught up in a Nigerian internet scam.
Instead of pocketing her share, $18m., Vuyiswa Yoli, 57, ended up losing £8,500 of her own cash.
And now she has been jailed by the Royal Court for eight months.
The former Princess Elizabeth Hospital nurse was taken in by an email promising her $18m. of a $45m. fortune said to belong to Dr Ahmed Hassan Ghoubashi, an industrialist and oil merchant killed in a car crash. The deal was that she would pretend to be his last surviving descendant.
She was told that under Nigerian law, unless someone from a foreign country claimed an inheritance it was transferred to a federal government suspense account.
Crown Advocate Graeme McKerrell said the contact came from a woman posing as an employee of Fidelity Bank PLC of Nigeria. The fraudster said that when the money had been paid, she planned to leave the bank to start a real estate firm in the UK.
Yoli, a South African, admitted one count of attempting dishonestly to obtain a money transfer by deception.
The Royal Court will also recommend to the Lt-Governor that she be deported on her release. She had a previously unblemished record.
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I am truly amazed that anyone falls for these ridiculous emails.
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All you have to do is ask them to send you their further details by post c/o The Guernsey Financial Services Commission.
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This is identical to an experience we here in Australia had about 2 years ago, the only difference was we were contacted by mail from a solicitor? in Spain. There’s an awful lot of fraudsters out there. Don’t fall for it.
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I had to check the date… no it isn’t April 1st!
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Deportation surely not isnt that racist?
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Andy, what the h*ll has racisim got to do with it?
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This is a classic Nigerian 419 scam
Please check out this site:
http://www.419eater.com/
These scumbags get some well deserved payback from “Scam Baiters” using some hilarioUs reverse scam techniques. Go to the ‘Letters Archive’ to see the results.
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Danlobster, what a star..
Thanks for the link..its absolutely brilliant. That man needs a pat on the back, slowly working through the ‘Bookworm’!!!!
Andy, check it out!
GD.
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Andy – care to elaborate on why deportation is racist?
It is a real shame that somebody who probably has no criminal intentions can be caught up in one of these scams. Shame on you George Agdgdgwngo!
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Seem’s Guernsey Press believes these scam letters as well. They way they reported this story the reporter and editor must have though there was $45m at the Fidelity Bank PLC in the first place.
Not only is this woman a victim to a scam that cost her thousand of pounds but now has also ruined her life, so what I want to know is what is the Guernsey Police doing about the scammers themselves in this case?
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These people scam in anything they can get their hands on. Late last year me and my husband moved back to London from Guernsey and search Gumtree for a house to rent. The place we found was also a Nigerian scam where they add other peoples property and demand deposits in advance. Lucky for us we did’nt fall for it.
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“what I want to know is what is the Guernsey Police doing about the scammers themselves in this case?”
There is very little they can do unfortuntately as I would imagine the scammers are from Nigeria and therefore out of the reach of the Guernsey authorities.
The most they can do is hand their evidence over to the Nigerian authorities and hope they act.
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JPlePen
Not only do the Press believe that there was $45 million at risk but the Police and the Court did too as she was found guilty of attempting to defraud the Fidelity bank of that amount
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Ray, I think that the court acknowledged that the money wasn’t really there to take, but the point is that she was consciously involved in an attempt to defraud. It is irrelevant whether that attempt could have worked – her criminal intent was enough to get the conviction for attempted fraud.
But I agree that the Press has rather missed the point (again).
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Woman jailed for being stupid. Far too much back-slapping going on here…so it was impossible that she would have managed to obtain millions since the fraud was designed to remove her life savings and nothing was coming her way. Isn’t it a great comfort that after the tens of thousands of pounds spent drafting, implementing and revising our AML legislation we at last manage to snare a major-league crime network and prevent some serious damage to our finance industry – sorry, I meant the tills at the foreign exchange desk. In view of recent attacks on its finance industry Guernsey could perhaps work behind the scenes on this type of scam and gather evidence agsinst the perpetrators who may well use offshore accounts for their grubby earnings. By putting pressure on foreign jurisdictions to share information on crimes committed here orchestrated by their citizens we would send out a message that this is not the hiding place for such gains.
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Nice link Dan Lobster, you beat me to it. “Shiver Metimbers” exploits are hilarious.
Also check out http://www.thescambaiter.com
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icshaz – this is not money laundering, it is fraud (by which I mean the real fraud on the convicted woman). If the UK, US and other major authorities can do nothing about these scams, I doubt there is much that the Guernsey police can do about them. And what have offshore accounts got to do with it? I seriously doubt that they would want to keep their money here as we are far too regulated for them. Their money will be safely back in Nigeria, where no-one from outside can touch them.
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It was several things – a fraud on her and she committed fraud in trying to obtain the goods but remember that the proescution accepted that she did not know the notes were forged. She was arrested on two counts: money laundering and the counterfeit currency. She admitted the count of trying to obtain a money transfer by deception so she goes down for one. My point was rather tongue-in-cheek: the AML regs have been revised after it is apparent that no-one can can prove what is in your mind and we now have a Forfeiture of Money in Civil Proceedings law (2007) which will make freezing and forfeiture of such gains if some millions did flow her way easier. The regulated entity in this case was following AML procedures surely in becoming suspicuous and reporting as their MD states “…we conform with the highest standards of anti-money laundering regulation”.
As to my flippant comment – we have celebrated the victory over some grubby forged notes but the finance sector is receiving daily requests for co-operation, “mutual assistance”, relating to its international clients stemming from aggrieved individuals or tax authorities who are taking up our generous offer of information exchange and legal assistance short circuited through our Income Tax authority who now are legally obliged to knock on your door if a foreign power fingers you. So my point – although not truly practical – was that we could turn the tables and demand that other jurisdictions give us assistance when we have pieced together the identity of Mr X. What better way of showing the we have “cleaned up our act” than raising the bar in this matter rather than closing the book by saying “it’s all happenng somewhere far away so we’ll leave that to others”.
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The convicted person in this case was not some little, old, lonely, lady duped by a clever confidence trickster. She was a professional woman considered skilled enough and intelligent enough to take care of patients in our PEH hospital.
She must have known that it was wrong to pretend to be someone else to obtain a benefit she was not entitled to. After hearing the evidence, the court certainly believed she knew she was engaged in an illegal activity.
Can there be anyone using the world wide web who is not aware of the warnings about these scams especially those coming from Nigeria?
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