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One Tammany: North Shore News
'Nigerian prince' and online romance scams raked in at least $250,000, Slidell police say
Updated 3:04 PM; Posted 3:04 PM

Michael Neu of Slidell has been arrested on wire fraud and money laundering charges in connection with internet scams, Slidell police said Thursday (Dec. 28).(Slidell Police Department)

By Bob Warrenbwarren@nola.com,
NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune

It began with a request from the police department in Dodge City, Kansas: Could Slidell police officers check out someone going by the name Michael Neu?
That was in May 2016. Detectives Michael Giardina and Nick Burtanog of the Slidell Police Department's Financial Crimes Unit didn't even know if Michael Neu was a real person. After all, the request from Dodge City was in connection with a complaint from a person who said they were conned out of money in an internet scam.
But the detectives soon found out that not only was Neu a real person, he was also willing to talk about what they said was his role in numerous internet scams. And some 18 months later it would lead to Neu being arrested and charged with 269 counts of wire fraud and money laundering.
In announcing his arrest in a news release Dec. 28, Slidell police said Neu was the "middle man" in online romance and Nigerian prince schemes. On Tuesday, detectives said those scams raked in more than $250,000. The detectives said they have tracked transactions involving victims in 17 states, including some in Louisiana.
Neu, who was arrested Nov. 28, remained in custody in the St. Tammany Parish Jail in Covington on $30,000 bond on Tuesday, jail records show. It could not be determined Tuesday if Neu is represented by an attorney.

Shortly after receiving the request from Dodge City, Slidell detectives found Neu and asked him to come to the police station to talk. During the conversation, Giardina and Burtanog said, he told them how years earlier he had been victimized in a romance scheme by someone he met on Facebook who called themselves "Maria Mendez,'' and how at some point he had gone from being a victim to being the "middle man'' in the scams.
In the romance scams, contact is made over the internet and often results in the victim continuing to send money -- typically routed through third parties -- to their romantic interest to help pay bills, cover airfare, etc.
In the Nigerian prince scam -- sometimes referred to by law enforcement as a "419,'' after the Nigerian statute outlawing fraud -- an email arrives from someone claiming to be or to represent a Nigerian prince or some other dignitary. They sometimes claim the recipient of the email is the beneficiary of a large sum of money but must first send some money or personal financial information, such as a bank account number, to speed the process. Other versions might involve someone purporting to be a government official seeking help moving money out of the country in exchange for a percentage of the total.
"They send out thousands of these day, hoping someone will bite,'' said Slidell Detective Daniel Seuzenau, a police department spokesman.
And people do.
"Most people laugh at the thought of falling for such a fraud, but law enforcement officials report annual losses of millions of dollars to these schemes," Slidell police said in the news release announcing Neu's arrest.
The cases can be hard for authorities to crack because not only are the investigations complicated and time-consuming -- and often lead to people outside the U.S. -- but also because the victims are often too embarrassed to come forward.
Although police say Neu was the middle man and didn't pose as a Nigerian prince, Giardina and Burtanog said their investigation took on the "Nigerian prince'' moniker.
The complaint from Dodge City involved a victim who had wired several thousand dollars to Neu. Dodge City police tracked that transaction to a Michael Neu in Slidell, police said.
The Slidell detectives said Neu told them he had gone from being a victim to at some point becoming the middle person to whom scammers directed their victims to send money. They would wire him money and from there, the detectives said, Neu told them he would wire the money to people Nigeria and keep a cut for himself. The police department's news release said the money was wired to "co-conspirators.''
The detectives said Neu was likely involved in several transactions per week. He set up numerous bank accounts to handle the money coming in from victims, the detectives said.
The detectives said Neu told them in that first meeting that he knew it was illegal to wire such money to Nigeria. He was not arrested during that first meeting because the investigation was still ongoing, the detectives said.
The detectives had served approximately 40 search warrants in connection with the case, a time-consuming process as the papers were sent through the financial institutions legal departments. As information from those warrants slowly began coming back, the detectives said they noticed that Neu had continued to make wire transactions to Nigeria even after they had interviewed with him.
"He admitted he knew it was wrong,'' Burtanog said. "He admitted he kept doing it.''
Burtanog and Giardina said they don't know how much Neu would keep as his cut from the alleged transactions, but they said it likely wasn't very much.

Police nab 'Nigerian prince.' He's from Slidell. Who knew?
(Spoiler alert: He's not really a prince.)
View Comments (3)

Source: Nola.com

The write-up is even confusing me.


Op please summarize it

emeijeh:
The write-up is even confusing me.


Op please summarize it

A white man was arrested for impersonating Nigerians and scamming his fellow Americans of Thousands of Dollars. They said he might have been a middle man for Yahoo boys in Nigeria, but I doubt that.

sweetTai:


A white man was arrested for impersonating Nigerians and scamming his fellow Americans of Thousands of Dollars. They said he might have been a middle man for Yahoo boys in Nigeria, but I doubt that.

Is that why the white dude is looking like someone who want to drop the strongest excreter mankind has ever seen?

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