A Nigerian businessman has appeared in court for allegedly defrauding an American citizen of 1.8 million dollars by promising him a non-existent oil contract, the anti-graft agency said Sunday.
The government’s Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) said 49-year-old Collins Oyejiaka and others still at large collected the money from Carle Vance under false pretence in August 1996.
Vance was reportedly promised a phony multi-million-dollar oil contract from the state-run Nigeria National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), it said.
The commission said the American was made to transfer the money in 16 different transactions to the accounts of Oyejiaka and his partners in at least seven countries: Nigeria, Switzerland, Benin Republic, Dubai, Belgium, Hong Kong and Japan.
Vance also met members of the group in Washington, Accra, London, and Brussels in the course of the deal, the agency said.
“All (the transactions) went on for about 10 years and after spending almost two million dollars (1.47 million euros) without receiving any crude oil supply, it dawned on him that he had been duped,” it said.
Oil-rich Nigeria, Africa’s most populous nation, is notorious for scams, ranging from emails and bank notes to fake pharmaceutical drugs.