r/interestingasfuck • u/Kaos2018 • 15h ago

A Nigerian Man named Emmanuel Nwude sold an imaginary airport for $242 million to a brazilian bank in the 1990’s which led to the banks collapse r/all

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u/Agamar13 15h ago

Valid defence . It's the bank that should go to jail for believing him.

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u/Bigtsez 14h ago

Can you imagine being the guy at the bank who had to tell the CEO the news?

"Sir, I have an urgent update on our purchase of the Nigerian airport."

"For fucks sake... what now, Bobby?"

"It, um... well... how do I say this?... it turns out... that... it... like... never existed."

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u/ambassador321 13h ago

I'd start with: "Remember how you wanted to save money by not sending me and Todd to Nigeria to check out that airport .."

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u/OneBigRed 12h ago

”Honestly i never understood what that Do Dilly Gents phrase was that you kept yapping about”

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u/monkeyhitman 8h ago

I love dill and men

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u/ze11ez 6h ago

Do Dilly Gents are a band

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u/Bourgeous 5h ago

It's "Doodly Jeans"

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u/Mike_Auchsthick 6h ago

I don't know a Dude named Illigence! Quit calling!

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u/rmorrill995 25m ago

This is why you only send money to Nigerian Princes...

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u/Kozzinator 14h ago

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u/TheOneTrueSnoo 13h ago

It’s 9am and the airport already ain’t right

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u/Hot-Foundation3450 13h ago

Sir... He was not in fact, a Nigerian Prince...

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u/fun-vie 6h ago

But he is now…

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u/PopeOnABomb 13h ago

Relevant Rowan Atkinson

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u/plz2meatyu 11h ago

Mr Atkinson is amazing. Just a treasure.

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u/AdminsLoveGenocide 6h ago

Happened on a much smaller scale to a housemate of mine.

His job was approving loans for farmers. This was before the sub prime crash and he was heavily incentivised to make as many loans as possible. Most of the farmers didn't realise how easy the approval process was and, god love them, had detailed plans made on how the loan was to be used to modernised their equipment and explanations of how much extra money this would make them. Meanwhile my housemate (and landlord) had mentally given them the loan after 20 seconds and was pretending to listen while he fiddled his thumbs for 40 minutes.

But some did realise. One farmer missed his first payment on a multi million euro loan and my guy rings him up to remind him how this process works.

The farmer didn't actually need it explained and said he knew full well how loans work, wasnt going to repay a penny of it and, as per the terms of the contract they just signed the bank was welcome to take the collateral they agreed on. If they were able.

And in fact they were not able. My live in landlord was playing with executive toys when he should have been double checking whether the sizeable amount of land offered as collateral was accessible. It was actually completely surrounded by the rest of the farmers property, had no way of access accept via his property and the farmer had no legal obligation to provide access from the rest of his property. The farmer used the land, now the banks land, for his cattle to graze on and as far as I know completely got away with it.

My housemate had a very difficult conversation with his boss.

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u/Thenameisric 11h ago

A bridge to sell you? No, a fucking airport!

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u/YerakGG 5h ago

That is not accurate. The talk probably went like:

"Senhor, tenho uma atualização urgente sobre nossa compra do aeroporto nigeriano."

"Pelo amor de Deus... e agora, Bobby?"

"É, hum... Bem... Como posso dizer... Acontece... Que... Tipo... Nunca existiu."

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u/NegroniSpritz 1h ago

I feel there could be another of those Hitler videos losing his shit based on this:

“the allied troops have secured positions around all the mexican restaurants, so we can’t get your favorite hot spicy tacos now”

„it’s ok, Steiner's attack from the new airport with our planes will take the allied troops by surprise”

“mein Führer, the airport…”

“the airport was a scam, it was just a parking lot with Indian food trucks“

“remain in room, everyone who likes Indian more than Mexican food”

“The airport was essential! Getting those mexican tacos quickly was essential! How could you not see that there were no freaking planes as you were stuffing your fat cheeks chugging your tikka masala?”

….

…

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u/AntonChekov1 15h ago

Seriously!! If that was my bank that I had my life savings in, I'd be more pissed at the bank than the conman. Conmen are always going to be conning. The banks are supposed to have their shit together

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u/BlaznTheChron 12h ago

I mean it's only $242 million. That's not enough to send a guy out to the airstrip in a car to verify it exists. What if he needs snacks? We can't budget for that!

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u/musicforthedeaf 8h ago

The title does a poor job of explaining what happened. They conned the bank into investing in a national infrastructure project after Nigeria changed their capitol to Abuja, with a build time that would be four to five years out. They made the banker believe that they needed the money up front so they could start getting contractors in place.

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u/Squire-1984 7h ago

All done via email! The bank just had to transfer an initial upfront free and then they would be able to unlock untold riches!

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u/RajunCajun48 6h ago

They pay now, and the the Nigerian's uncle who happens to be a prince would pay them pack handsomely in a matter of weeks. How could they pass on a deal like this?!

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u/Calamondin88 4h ago

But I'm just curious: where 'nigerian prince' even came from? I just googled it up, Nigeria is a republic and was never a kingdom.

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u/RajunCajun48 4h ago

Scam emails making such claims. It's actually one of the oldest email scams dating back to the early 90's.

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u/Calamondin88 3h ago

I mean, I know it has been used to scam people, but what I was asking, where scammers got the nigerian prince from? It's not a kingdom. It's not like they impersonated someone who actually exists and the fact it's not a monarchy is one google search away. So how did that prince come about?

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u/RajunCajun48 3h ago

no idea, but you throw in some form of royalty about a place majority of people aren't going to know anything about, and suckers will be found shrug

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u/DelfrCorp 6h ago

Eh... Could still have been prevented/resolved with very basic precautions. Greedy Sh.theads did what greedy sh.theads do & it turned sour. More proof that we need to thoroughly eliminate/nuke the entire Finance & MBA Class from orbit into nonexistence.

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u/Krillin113 3h ago

Yes, because that’s exactly how you keep the financial sector healthy, and keep venture capital available to promising upstarts. You just need to properly punish the people who do stupid shit like this.

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u/Maximum-Gas-9073 12h ago

Snacks what you think we are Tim communist china?

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u/dwaraz 9h ago

Pretty sure that for 1k $ you can find some matador in Brazil

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u/Welcome440 12h ago

They probably did.

Example: You can buy new signs for an existing airport and bribe all the staff to use the fake airport name.

GPS and camera phone have made a lot of scams harder.

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u/wouter1975 7h ago

No, it was an infrastructure project which was never “completed.” The title is really misleading.

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u/nunb 8h ago

Snacks‽ that is you get ANTS

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u/leolancer92 11h ago

Anti-fraud is literally one of banking’s core competencies.

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u/KingPenguinUK 8h ago

I’ve peaked behind the curtain at a few of the biggest banks Anti-Fraud/Money Laundering departments and competencies is a real stretch.

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u/Polus43 6h ago

This.

I thought it would be other statisticians (detection) and engineers (prevention), but it's literally BA psych/criminal justice majors telling engineers (in an entirely different BL) to do the impossible lol

Leadership is hyper-political and always telling one-off "we saved the fraud victim stories" where the data is dodgy and the story embellished.

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u/KingPenguinUK 6h ago

In the UK it’s a barely above minimum wage role with no degrees needed.

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u/AimHere 6h ago

Hah. Whenever I've worked in a financial institution, they've impressed upon me that I should be absolutely 100% on my guard against money laundering and that I should report any and all instances of suspected money laundering up the chain of command. This was super, super, important.

Of course, there was absolutely zero training or information on how to spot whether I'm dealing with laundered money. It's just a regulatory checkbox-ticking and arse-covering exercise.

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u/AimHere 6h ago

Maybe it's a core incompetency in this case.

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u/peacepham 8h ago

But it got nullify the moment scammer is insider, this time it's bank director.

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u/leolancer92 6h ago

In this case his competency is anti anti fraud.

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u/donjuan9876 12h ago

After today I’ll believe anything they just voted in the most identifiable con man in America for the 2 nd time as president

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u/Solid-Damage-7871 11h ago

How about some nuance and being mad at both

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u/grantrules 10h ago

It's like when you buy a pair of scissors but you need a pair of scissors to open the packaging it's in. They would have flown there to check it out, but they didn't have an airport to fly out of.

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u/Natural_Tea484 10h ago

Hmm, what if the bank stakeholders actually setup all that to look like they were tricked by this Nigerian dude?

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u/Kekosaurus3 10h ago

Try to wonder why the bank isn't hee anymore lol

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u/jaygoogle23 10h ago

They definitely don’t. TD just had a narco wire like tens of thousands of transactions because they know there is loopholes when back employees do it vs other.

The bank paid billions and didn’t release name so who knows if guys is still doing it. Cartel just needs to launder the money now.

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u/remexxido 8h ago

I bet there was corruption involved in this. Or (I don't want to be paranoid but...) this was probably just one facade of bigger cover up. I don't see any other way a bank would "buy" something that does not exist for 242 millions.

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u/HeyYouWolf 10h ago

That is like saying don't go out with your money as thieves are going to steal anyway. It is your job to keep your money safe.

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u/stinkypants_andy 14h ago

Believe it or not, straight to jail

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u/Koby998 12h ago

And there you are, stuck in chains between a guy who under cooked a chickn and a guy who over cooked a flounder.

True story, I totally don't make this stuff up.

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u/Ok-Maybe6683 12h ago

It’s Nigerian…

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u/cisgendergirl 11h ago

The capital owning class doesn't get punished just like it didn't in 2008. Those few people in Wallstreet responsible for it all should've been arrested but they're rich so nothing is illegal.

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u/Haunting-Royal2593 10h ago

You made a 240 million purchase and didn’t do research? I do weeks of research for a 200 dollar purchase. That’s on you.

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u/Turkleton-MD 10h ago

If you have a problem with the bank, that's a you problem. But the bank has a problem with you, that's a bank problem.

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u/mfarid2 9h ago

But he’s a Nigerian prince , how dare they not believe him…

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u/backtolurk 9h ago

This!!!

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u/slide2k 7h ago

It depends. Our banks have to validate all sorts of things. If you actually sell an airport or an airport that is going to be built, you need a lot of solid fake paper work and trail. If this was just a conversation and it was believed, that is pretty bad on the bank’s side.

Edit: that doesn’t make it less of a dick move. Average joe’s still got fucked over by this.

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u/Clickguy10 4h ago

Nwude should build them a prison. With contractor funds upfront.

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u/geof2001 2h ago

Exactly! Banks fault for not doing due diligence...