National Wire About Nigerians, Nigerian Business and Other Stories
The Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) has alerted the public of the activities of con men who specialize in circulating phantom letters of crude oil allocation with the intent of defrauding unsuspecting would-be buyers.
Group Managing Director of the Corporation, Dr. Maikanti Baru raised the alarm during the presentation of commendation letters to 12 staff of the Crude Oil Marketing Division (COMD) of the Corporation in Abuja.
According to a statement from the corporation, Baru said the activities of the international fraudsters created an unnecessary distraction for staff of the COMD who were compelled to deal with huge turnover of scam mails on a regular basis.
He urged members of the public to be wary of such dubious emails purporting to emanate from the corporation with mouth-watering crude oil allocation offers.
Providing an insight into the activities of the nefarious group, the Group General Manager in charge of the Crude oil Marketing Division of the Corporation, Mallam Mele Kyari, said the scammers function by sending fake crude oil allocation letters using names of senior NNPC officials as decoy and requesting the gullible individuals to pay certain cash deposits as commission on volume of crude received.
“The gullible individuals end up paying huge sums of dollars into these accounts as commission but the reality is that nobody allocates crude oil on a piece of paper the way the scammers canvass in their dubious letters. Everything about crude sale is electronic and real time. If you have your cargo the whole world knows,” Kyari said.
