Wife of Recently Deceased Nigerian General Steals Australian Houses Using Just Email

Oh, those wily Nigerians! The only thing the nation exports is spam, but it is spam that is full of win for them. They used it to impersonate an Australian and were able to sell two of his houses and pocket the money.

From ZDNet here:

An international cybercrime investigation is underway into a sophisticated scam network that left a Western Australian man half a million dollars out of pocket when criminals sold his Perth investment property using stolen credentials.

The man, Roger Mildenhall, had been overseas for more than a year when his neighbour informed him that a house of his had been put on the market and was in the process of being sold. Mildenhall then found out that another property of his had already been sold in June.

Mildenhall rushed home and action was taken to stop him losing a second property. The crimes were reported to the police last Friday.

The thieves, believed to be Nigerian, had enough information on Mildenhall to satisfy regulatory requirements.

State, federal and overseas police agencies will investigate the complex scam, which is considered the first of its kind in Australia. Scammers had stolen Mildenhall’s email account and personal and property documents to sell the houses and funnel cash into Chinese bank accounts.

Keep an eye on your credit reports folks. Also, it may be very likely that this man had already fallen for a Nigerian 419 scam but had backed out after he had disclosed his financial details.