28 July 2005 – The Philippine Embassy in Madrid, Spain joined calls by the Department of Foreign Affairs and the Philippine Embassy in Abuja, Nigeria for Filipinos to beware of letter and email scams perpetrated by fraudsters. This warning comes alongside a report by Philippine Ambassador to Spain Joseph D. Bernardo y Media of the arrest of more than 300 persons by police authorities in Costa del Sol, Malaga on 20 July 2005 on charges of swindling thousands of people out of hundreds of millions of Euros in the largest international scam ever discovered in Spain.

Ambassador Bernardo said that most of the people arrested are foreign nationals from West Africa.  Spanish authorities have accused them of defrauding tens of thousands of people of as much as 100 million euros a year by sending letters claiming that their victims had won Spain's national lottery, and that they had to send money in order to collect the prize.

More than six million letters were sent each year, and over 20,000 people in 50 countries, principally in Europe, North America, Australia and the Middle East, are believed to have been conned since the syndicate began operating in 2003, according to information gathered by the Embassy.  Police authorities in Spain began their operation in tracking down the syndicate in 2003 following various complaints received by the Spanish Government from diplomatic missions in Spain.  The operation was led by Spanish fraud investigators in collaboration with Interpol, Europol, FBI and the US Postal Service.

According to the report, the Philippine Embassy in Madrid has been swamped with numerous complaints by a number of OFWs abroad and Filipinos residing in the Philippines who were victimized by the syndicate in this largest money scam.  The Embassy has consistently issued the necessary advisory for all Filipinos not to be victimized by these scams.

Earlier, the Philippine Embassy in Abuja warned Filipinos against similar email and letter scams originating from Nigeria sometimes known as the “419 scam.”  The scams have caught the attention of the Media, law enforcement and even diplomatic missions in the Federal Republic of Nigeria and a number of warnings to the public have already been issued.   Some forms of the letter scam claim to be seeking help for a very ill person to induce the recipients to disclose detailed personal information allegedly to facilitate transfer of funds intended to be donated; all the while collecting these information to be used by the fraudster for illegal bank transactions.  (For background, please refer to official DFA press releases SFA-AGR-245-05, dated 27 April 2005 and SFA-AGR-261-05, dated 06 May 2005).  END