How do legitimate Nigerian companies order computers and other things from overseas?

Factual Questions
1

From what I heard, eBay and Craigslist are now packed full of Nigerian scammmers. So many people know about the scammers, it seems like nobody wants to do business with anyone from Nigeria. I’ve seen lots of auctions with descriptions that include “NO NIGERIANS!” or “NO BIDS FROM AFRICA!”. I would imagine that using a Nigerian address at an online store would trigger lots of red flags.

So, how do legitimate Nigerian firms procure parts and equipment from overseas? With everyone outside of Nigeria thinking everyone inside Nigeria is a scammer, what do they do? How have the scammers affected legitimate businesses in Nigeria in general? Are they finding it increasingly difficult to do any sort of business outside of the country because of the nation’s reputation as the scamming capital of the world?

2

Excellent question!

3

Must suck to be a lawyer or accountant in Nigeria these days, too, especially if you really do need to contact somebody who may be owed some money…

4

Probably the same way that any other international firm would operate. Using legitimate channels and valid forms of payment.

Legitimate firms in other countries don’t offer to buy random electronics, sight unseen, for more than they’re worth, and then try to overpay and get you to send the extra back. Legitimate firms have physical addresses and accounts at trusted banks. Legitimate firms don’t only do business over email.

And legitimate firms probably don’t frequent eBay or Craigslist, either.

5

Snail mail on company letterhead probably helps a lot.

6

Long before eBay and craigslist, Nigerians were scamming businesses (not so much individuals) by mail and then by fax. They’d get a bunch of business directories and write with obscure purchasing proposals. As businesses then and now do sometimes get orders by mail or fax, I can imagine that (but for the origin of the fax) a seller of widgets might say, hmm, yeah, that’s a legitimate offer. (I have counterparts in Asia who are huge, household-name company employees, who have never heard of a purchase order or supply agreement or computerized inventory/ordering systems, and instead routinely place transactions/orders worth hundreds of thousands of dollars by scribbled facsimile). Presumably, the parties to a Japanese-Japanese order, or a Japanese-U.S. order, would not be so trusting or casual if the order were coming from/going to Lagos.

I hope.

7

this cnn article
points out that some Nigerian e-bay scammers are now using mailing addresses in Europe, because they know that inobody will do business with Nigeria

8

Tell me about it. I’ve been trying for years to get U.S. $20,000,000 (TWENTY MILLION DOLLARS) out of the country that belonged to FORMER PRESIDENT ABDULSALAMI ABUBAKAR. I keep trying to find people to help me arrange to transfer it out of the country, but even when I find someone and I AM SURE AND HAVE CONFIDENCE OF THEIR ABILITY AND RELIABILITY TO PROSECUTE A TRANSACTION OF THIS GREAT MAGNITUDE INVOLVING A PENDING TRANSACTION REQUIRING MAXIIMUM CONFIDENCE, they end up disappointing me. :frowning:

9

I receive order queries fairly regularly from Nigeria (I own a retail bookstore). Most recently, they’ve been coming in as TTY relay calls–ostensibly from a deaf consumer.

I inform them that all orders being shipped to Nigeria must be prepaid by cashier’s check and will not be shipped until one week after that check has cleared my bank. So far, none of them have been willing to follow up. From speaking to other bookstore owners, it appears that they order large quantities of obscure, expensive books (medical texts, for example) and pay using a stolen credit card, a bad check, or a forged cashier’s check.

Most of the store owners I know simply throw away any faxed, emailed, or snail-mailed orders from Nigeria, and hang up on telephone orders. I have no idea how legitimate Nigerian companies can buy products any more.

10

I replied back to one of those guys with the following message:

The shoelace holders and jackelopes didn’t seem to faze him. He ignored what I wrote him and replied back with this message, apparently after visiting our web site:

Trouble is, “Software Features” and “Subscriptions” aren’t products, so that was pretty funny. I guess they don’t really care what they’re receiving as long as they get the money.

I finally got tired of playing with him after a few more exchanges, but hopefully he scammed a few less people while he was “scamming” me.

11

Funny this subject came up. I am the Internet Sales Manager at a Mercedes dealership and have been contacted recently by a person named Jessican Morgan (with a gmail account). They kept saying they would contact me shortly, they want to buy a car in cash, etc. Thinking I had a deal, I kept following up. The following e-mail came in tomorrow:

hello lance
how are you doing i hope all is moving on smoothly,i will like to buy one first for a start and see where it goes from there then we can talk of buying them in bulk with discounts ok the Mercedes-Benz E320 is to be shipped to nigeria ok calculate the total price including the shippment fee through dhl express and send me your full name and contact adress for immediate payment ok get back to me asap
best regards
If a customer comes in here and they say they are from Nigeria, we have to be extra careful with they keys and everything. Funny.

12

That’s true, but what if I owned … oh, Lagos Doohickeys, and I really, really wanted to buy 100,000 widgets from Cecil Widgets in Chicago. How do I convince them that I’m not a scammer? I don’t think company letterhead is enough; they’ll see “Nigeria” in the address and throw it out. How do I pay for the widgets? Cecil Widgets probably won’t give me an account number where I can wire money, because who knows what I could do with that.

13

And you’re sure as Hell not going to arrange it the way my counterparts arrange it, with shipment going out sometimes on a purchase order and an invoice sent out later for “90 days net.”

14

Well, if I was Lagos Widgetts, I would start a bank account in an American Bank, and do business by sending the cashiers check and waiting the week for the payment to clear. I would also probably have sombody at the Washingtod DC or NY embassy handle the transaction for me [I have seen embassy personnel doing stuff like this to get accoutns started back when I was temping in a ‘widget supply’ company]

Once the transaction shave gone smoothly, then in the future standard business practices tend to work=)

15

Sure they do. I’ve worked with lots of companies that procure stuff from eBay and Craig’s List. Hell, I’ve worked with comanies that go out trolling for equiptment at garage sales on weekends.

I’m moving to Cameroon to teach computers, so I’ll let you know if I get any insight in to this subject there. I’d imagine that most Nigerian companies needing to do this kind of business in the US have US based friends or business contacts who can help them out. People in developing countries tend to have very strong and wide-reaching social networks that can make stuff like this happen.

16

You really do have to be careful with these Nigerian scams. For example, once I got an email promising 20 million dollars for help in disposing of some unclaimed assets from a Nigerian bank. Well, after travel expenses and fees I barely cleared 1 million. So you do have to be careful.

17

Even sven has a good point here. I can’t help thinking of the large number of Nigerians living in Britain (not to mention Britons of Nigerian descent), who probably have every piece of genuine documentation pored over by spotty bank ‘managers’ who don’t know how to identify a fake in the first place.

18

This would be a good time to mention the hilarious 419 Eater.

19

This is a country with a population of 132 million people - nearly half that of the US. There is absolutely no way they’re all crooks.

Yet from what I’ve heard, people in the rest of Africa don’t want to do business with Nigerian companies either, which must suck serious ass for legit Nigerian operations.

20

BTW, here’s some fun I had with a scammer last weekend:

My goodladywife got an email from a WALE ADAMS from Bluebird Travel, asking whether we could accommodate four guests for 14 nights at our hotel. Fantastic! Great business! (If we had a hotel.)

Unlike many other emails of this sort, this had a UK mobile phone number on it. As I have more than 800 free minutes to use up on my plan this month, I thought I’d give them a call.

Puzzlingly, though the mail was from a Scottish company, and the email address was from the Czech republic, the gentleman at the other end sounded Nigerian. The wonders of globalisation!

I used the name he’d sent, but he didn’t seem to recognise it. Then I mentioned the name of the travel agency, and he suddenly said “yes, that is me, my name is WALE ADAMS”.

He told us the booking is good, and all we have to do is send an email and they’ll send their credit card details to us.

We explained that we will happily accomodate the guests! It’s a great business opportunity for us!

My wife then told them that our hotel is top class: all our rooms have a golden shower!

I explained that we do breakfast in bed - and we slip all our guests a length of sausage every morning!

After the last piece of information, our friend just said “OK, OK, OK, OK” over and over again. I then heard loud traffic noise, and he hung up.

If anyone else would like to call Bluebird Travel, here’s the number: