Africa, the Scammers' new Hunting Ground

Investment scams are going like a tsunami across the world. The continent where these scams are increasing the most is Africa.

Today, I, Lars Olofsson represent thousands of victims of fraud, and on all continents. In recent years, I have seen a sharp increase in African countries. It is particularly in West Africa and South Africa that investment fraud is both carried out and increased. When my associates and I look at the hundreds of clients we have in these countries, we see how extremely affected these victims are. It is not just individuals, but entire families and extended families who become destitute at the same time.

Soft Targets

Investment fraudsters have always sought out countries and regions where there are less education and people have less experience of how the economy and investment work. When the Eastern European countries gained independence in the late 1980s and early 1990s, people in several of these countries were victims of investment scammers. The most horrific example was Albania, which in 1996-97 was hit by a large-scale pyramid fraud in which up to a third of the population was affected, and this led to civil war and the fall of the government.

Why Africa?

On the African continent, fraudsters have a great advantage in the way people are attached to each other in different groups or tribes. Almost all investment scams are based on investors recruiting other investors from among their family, relatives and friends. With the social structures that exist in many African countries, and their tradition of someone who is the family, or clan, leader, the fraudsters can target the person who leads their family, or clan, and this person is trained to then recruit others in the family or clan.

With the tradition that the leader takes care of the group, and you follow their advice, you can easily get lots of investors by only setting targets on a few individuals. Unfortunately, it is also the case that the family collects money to jointly either invest in a business or that someone in the group receives an education – and the same can apply to investments offered by the fraudsters.

The whole family is affected

In many African countries, it is the family that is the social and economic safety net. If a family member gets into distress and gets into financial trouble, the family often helps when society's protection and resources are limited. When an entire family, or relatives, become victims of an investment scam at the same time, there is no safety net left, and the victims are completely knocked out, and without help.

I have examples among my clients in West Africa where the family had collected money that would go to the education of some of the family's children, and they had jointly decided to invest in these children who would then be able to help the elderly in the family when they had received a good education and the opportunity to help. Now that the person in charge of the common treasury has been defrauded, it has extremely serious consequences not only for the children who are left without an education, but also for the elderly who were dependent on these children to help them.

Difficult for the local police to investigate and combat fraud

Another reason why Africa has become a continent where investment fraudsters seek out is that the local police have very limited resources to investigate this type of crime. When the police throughout Europe are more or less at a loss with their resources, it becomes even more impossible for the police in most African countries. In addition, there is the problem of corruption, where criminals have a greater opportunity to bribe authorities. In the example of Albania, which I mentioned above, it turned out that several authorities were actively involved in the fraud itself as well.

Up to 300,000 victims in Nigeria

One of the investment scams that my associates and I represent victims of crime for has gone by the name Omega Pro. There is credible information that in Nigeria alone, there are up to 300,000 victims of this fraud and when we look at how much our clients in Nigeria have lost on average - about 15,000 US Dollars - it can be a total of more than 4.5 billion US Dollars – and it is an economic disaster for the whole country.

Lars Olofsson, lawyer from Sweden