Nigeria antifraud agency to unplug Internet at homes

Nigeria's Economic and Financial Fraud Commission (EFCC) is on the prowl for online fraudsters operating from their homes.

Changing its tactic of focusing solely on cybercafés, the agency now plans to unplug Internet connections at residences and hotels where fraudsters operate.

Private homes and offices currently constitute the greatest number of originating locations through which online fraudsters perpetrate their nefarious activities, said an EFCC source in Abuja. Hotels inside major cities and towns have also become hubs for fraudsters seeking cover, the source said.

"We are beginning to ask hotels to insist on getting the full details of their clients, including photocopies of international passports or ID cards," said the EFCC official.

According to the EFCC in a formal assessment of its efforts over the past year, "The fraudsters now operate from private homes, hotels and using broadband and wireless facilities. A disturbing trend in this area is the huge number of young persons, mostly undergraduates, in this criminal enterprise."

The agency has opened formal discussions with mobile phone operators to provide a window through which activities of users could be accessed. These mobile operators now constitute a significant percentage of Internet service providers to a growing number of subscribers.

There are more than five million CDMA (Code Division Multiple Access) phones spread across more than 50 cities and towns, with the greatest concentration in Lagos, Nigeria's commercial capital. With more than 53 million subscribers, GSM (Global System for Mobile Communications) phones are more widely used. Coverage extends beyond 70 percent of Nigeria's landmass of 927,000 square kilometers, about four times the size of Great Britain.

This wide coverage area is often exploited by criminals on the move. But the EFCC said the challenge could be addressed once operators begin to keep proper documentation on mobile Internet customers.

The EFCC hopes for the networks to commit to providing background data on users of their Internet services, particularly at homes to "at least eliminate that comfort zone from the probable points where fraudsters cold operate," the agency said.

Hundreds of raids were carried out on cybercafés between December 2007 and October 2008, with several arrests made over suspicious e-mails. According to the agency, however, "the fight against advanced fee fraud has remained a challenge." The stream of petitions from foreigners, either directly or through their embassies, have continued to pour in, and evidence has revealed that fraudsters are using rapidly changing typologies to evade detection.

The EFCC is one of the government bodies lobbying for registration of all SIM (Subscriber Identity Module) cards and Internet access points. The government is already in discussions with the country's legislative chambers to enact laws that would make it mandatory for networks to get proper documentation on every SIM card owner in the country.

"Criminals will move from operating from homes once they know that zone has become hot," said Sunday Folayan, CEO of Skannet, an Internet service provider in Ibadan, Nigeria. "It is still proper to keep that part of the pipe free from criminal abuse."