|
|
|
Christmas has come and gone and I feel about the same after it as I did
before it. But things weren’t always that way . Christmas in my former
incarnations, first as a cop and then as a bank security director, was always a
worrisome thing which left you with a feeling of relief after it had passed over
without serious damage to the people and places you were responsible for
protecting.
In both of those jobs I had to issue yearly Christmas bulletins stressing the
horrors that threatened us at “the most joyous season of the year”. That
was because some of the people who found it especially joyous were pickpockets,
shoplifters, mail thieves, con men, identity switchers, burglars, robbers and
others who saw Christmas as a holiday, I suppose, but even more as an
opportunity.
Leading the pack were, of course, the Nigerian grifters who poured into
America for the season, in some cases returning after deportation using a new name,
in other cases coming as newcomers to join their friends and share in their
prosperity here. A newspaper story two days ago shows the kind of thing they
get up to.
This is the story of Chuku Okasoanya’s arrest for using a stolen credit card
to buy $14,000 worth of laptop computers in a Long Island store. When he was
searched he was found to have driver’s licenses for nine other people in his
possession plus another credit card that had been used for $9,000 worth of
fraudulent purchases.
Chuku however was not in business for himself, but for his father Emeka, who
had already been arrested for possession of $250,000 worth of fraudulently
obtained merchandise, including cars, kitchen appliances and kitchen sinks that
he was apparently planning to ship to Nigeria for sale on the black market
there. In the meantime he kept them in a warehouse he had rented for them in
Brooklyn. He was security-conscious and anxious to keep out burglars.
The Suffolk police had been working with Chuku for months trying to get him
to inform on the credit card racket, but he had fobbed them off with stale
information. They then changed their tactics to bring him under surveillance,
resulting in his arrest, and they hoped, a change to a more collegial approach
to their joint effort. Presumably, though, he won’t be asked to give up his
father.
Reading about such Nigerian wiseguys was nostalgic for me because they filled
up a big space in my life in the eleven years I worked in bank security.
They were pervasive. I only stopped them by the use of my cameras. There was
no other way to catch up to people who changed their identity like other people
change their shoes, and who wouldn’t be recognized by their faces alone, due
to the volume of business in the banks and the high turnover in tellers. So I
birddogged them with my 150 cameras, personally inspecting them to see that
they were focused on the tellers’ windows and not the bank’s windows, that the
good cameras were in the places where they were needed and the old ones in
reserve, that the tape was rotated correctly, with the oldest one on file
replacing the one newly completed, and in general bringing our workers to a high
state of camera awareness. The Nigerians started to avoid my bank.
The Nigerian invasion had taken the country by surprise in the 70’s when
American banks were shocked to find that a crowd of uneducated tribesmen from the
African jungle “knew more about American banking than Americans know” (U.S.
Post Office) and were putting their knowledge to work to strip the banks of
millions each year. They hadn’t come from jungles, of course, Nigeria being a
semi-urbanized country, and neither were they uneducated., instead they were
cool and sophisticated professionals using a technique they had perfected in
Europe and the Middle East before introducing it to America.
Basically the plan was for a number of the emigrants to club together to rent
housing for their group, then to find low-level work in offices or banks or
any place where they could get access to personnel records containing the kind
of personal data needed to apply for a credit card. In this way cleaners were
alleged to have been able to use even Walter Cronkite’s personal information
to get themselves a card in his name.
Not at his address, of course. The only discrepancies appearing in the
applications for the cards were the addresses, which hardly fit the status of the
purported applicants. They were in ghettoes, either at the apartments occupied
by the Nigerians or at drops used by them. A lot of applications were
eventually rejected for unsuitable addresses, but a lot got through also. The cards
issued on the strength of them became the building blocks of the Nigerian
empire.
The maximum value was then extracted from each one. The process begins with
obtaining a cash advance for the largest amount allowed by the card issuer.
This isn’t paid back until the last moment, after several warnings have been
sent out and threats made. The payment is made with a check from a bank account
starter kit issued to an accomplice who’s opened the account using another
stolen card for ID. It still can be used this way although it’s become “hot”
when it comes to getting any more money on it.
With the first withdrawal repaid the card passer’s credit has been cured and
he’s now eligible to make another maximum withdrawal, providing his stolen
check clears. This happens often enough, or there are enough delays, for the
cash to be obtained. Eventually the bank learns it’s been had with a stolen
check and the card is canceled. No further money can be obtained on it, but it’s
still good for identification, as I’ve explained. The whole procedure
provides an example, a left-handed one, of synergy and the maximum use of resources.
There are plenty of variations on the scheme above, but some of the elements
were common to all these capers. False identification was a must in every one
of them That is the starting point. Credit cards are not always necessary.
Quick action to obtain the loot is not indispensable either, Sometimes it
can pay to play a waiting game and let your fraudulent account go unused for a
while so no suspicion arises. Then you strike. Salt the account with a big
deposit of stolen checks and then trust to luck and lax procedures to enable you
to clear out the account before the checks bounce. ATMs and internet
accounts are a big help in doing this. You, the perpetrator, can get a preview of
your account status by checking out the ATM or the internet account prior to
barging into the bank to get the money out. If the deadline for clearance has
passed and your bad checks aren’t back yet, the money is yours. But please don’
t do it.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
