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No question about it. This issue’s top SFT award just has to go to Dr. Oludare Wilson. Nobody else could possibly even come close to this one!
Dr. Wilson sent a letter outlining a situation in which he desperately needed help. While working for the Nigerian government, Dr. Wilson acknowledged he had been part of a corrupt group of workers that had overinflated a $665 million engineering and construction contract. There was $32 million that could easily be taken off the top since the invoice had been approved and was in the process of payment. Wilson’s problem, however, was that he needed a safe place to transfer the $32 million – someplace far away from Nigeria where it couldn’t be seized by other dishonest officials.
Wilson, in his rather desperate letter, offered to part with as much as $9.6 million of the cashfall – if only the addressee would help out by allowing Wilson to transfer the entire $32 million into the addressee’s business bank account.
For good effect, Wilson recounted the tale of how he and his partners (all officials) had tried to do this same thing once before but had chosen the wrong partners and were unable to lay claim to their share of the $27.5 million they had transferred to the account of the person they thought was going to help them. For this reason, Wilson explained, they were sending this plea to someone they thought was above reproach.
The letter was sent to an address in London:
President or CEO
Serious Frauds Office
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