Nigerian officials have launched a new initiative called "Project Eagle Claw" that will target Internet scams coming out of the country. The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission has already made a number of arrests and shut down 800 websites, with many more to come.
It turns out Nigeria is taking measures to fight Internet scams—law enforcement there has shut down close to a thousand websites and made 18 arrests as part of a new initiative to save the nation's reputation and crack down on Internet scammers. The program, called "Project Eagle Claw," has only just begun, but Nigerian officials expect it to be fully operational in 2010.
Nigeria's Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) described the initiative as "a renewed bid to clap down" (*clap clap*?) on Internet fraudsters. So far, the agency claims to have shut down 800 scam sites in addition to making the arrests, with many more apparently to come.
EFCC Chairman Farida Waziri said Wednesday during a US address to the National Conference of Black Mayors that Nigeria was working with Microsoft to fully deploy Project Eagle Claw, and that it will soon be able to take down up to 5,000 fraudulent e-mails per month. She also expects the system to send up to 230,000 advisory e-mails to victims every month.
Waziri explained that the EFCC's previous strategy for fighting cybercrime involved "cyber raids" and petitions—slow and ineffective in today's fast-moving Internet world—and that Eagle Claw would be much more proactive. "We expect that Eagle Claw as conceived will be 100 percent operational within six months and at full capacity, it will take Nigeria out of the top 10 list of countries with the highest incidence of fraudulent e-mails," Waziri said.
Indeed, if you live outside of Africa, Nigeria is practically synonymous with various scams, some of which predate the Internet. Thanks to the explosion of online connectivity in the last several decades, however, so-called "Nigerian scams" have taken on a new life of their own—fraudsters have managed to grift millions of dollars out of unsuspecting victims in recent years, with even major banks coming dangerously close to wiring their own cash halfway around the world.
This has caused an entire culture of scam baiters to spring up in order to troll scammers and distract them from the real victims (something that we here at Ars briefly dabbled in ourselves), showing that scams out of Nigeria are indeed more than a minor law enforcement annoyance. At this point, it's just nice to see Nigerian officials trying a more realistic strategy towards curbing cybercrime than merely blaming the victim, even if it may take years worth of enforcement before we see any tangible results.
By Jacqui Cheng
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