One man managed to carry out one of the most advanced scams in history when he sold an imaginary airport for $242,000,000.
We've seen some pretty amazing scams over the years, and with it not just being conning someone out of giving their bank details over the phone, there are much grander ones like Charles Ponzi's infamous Ponzi scheme, Jordan Belfort inspiring The Wolf of Wall Street, and Victor Lustig trying to sell the Eiffel Tower. Hollywood loves these kind of stories, and alongside Belfort being immortalized, Catch Me If You Can was based on the scammings of Frank William Abagnale Jr.
There are tons of fraudsters out there, but do you know the story of the man who tried to pull off one of the biggest scams of all time when he attempted to sell an imaginary airport? Giving us some serious The Emperor's New Clothes Vibes, this is how Emmanuel Nwude tried to con the world.
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Nwude was the former director of the Union Bank of Nigeria and tried to use his legitimate credentials to gain funding for an airport that was never going to exist.
To pull off his scam, Nwude phoned Nelson Sakaguchi, a director for the Brazilian bank Banco Noroeste, and claimed to be someone else from the Central Bank of Nigeria. Masquerading as the bank's governor, Paul Ogwuma, Nwude convinced Sakaguchi to authorize the funds.
With Sakaguchi due to get a hefty $10 million commission, why wouldn't the approve the airport? Still, with no background checks and no one visiting the fictional airport in Nigeria's capital of Abuja, the money continued to flow.
Between 1995 and 1998, Sakaguchi paid Emmanuel and his accomplices a total of $242 without a single visit to a construction site. Things came crashing in down in 1997 when Banco Noroeste was looking through its expenses ahead of being bought by Santander. Alarm bells rang when Banco Noroeste noticed nearly half of its money was being siphoned to the Cayman Islands, an infamous tax haven.
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Criminal investigations quickly followed, but with bank owners having to pay out of their own pockets to try and see the sale through, Banco Noroeste collapsed in 2001.
Emmanuel and his accomplices were eventually sent to court in 2004, but after the case was thrown out, they had to be arrested again to face charges elsewhere. They pleaded not guilty to over 100 counts of fraud and bribery, which is ironic when Emmanuel was later given another charge for trying to bribe the head of the commission with $75,000 after one of his accomplices confessed. Only when Sakaguchi was brought in as a witness did Emmanuel eventually confess - sentenced to 25 years in prison.
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The case takes an even wilder turn when you look at where Emmanuel is now. He was released from prison in 2006, and with him arguing that some of his assets were acquired before the offense was committed, he filed a successful lawsuit and has already recovered over $52 million.
With this becoming one of the best-known '419' scams in Nigeria, people on Reddit still can't quite believe it.
One shocked person wrote: "Seriously!! If that was my bank that I had my life savings in, I'd be more pissed at the bank than the conman. Conmen are always going to be conning. The banks are supposed to have their sh*t together."
Another chuckled: "Nwude’s $242 million scam on an imaginary airport is one of the biggest cons in history proof that even entire corporations can fall for a well-crafted story."
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Someone simply joked: "Schrödinger’s airport!"
We've got to hand it to Nwude, that's a pretty successful scam.