Essien (l) and Drogba are icons to many African boys

by sweet east pearl | July 14, 2008 at 10:30 pm | 40 views | add comment | 0 recommendations

Going to UK as a footballers is a dream of many young Nigerian, and woulld be an attractive way to escape poverty. But the bad guys were taking advantage for this kind situation.

An undercover BBC investigation has exposed how young African footballers are being conned out of thousands of dollars by Nigerian fraudsters.
One gang which was confronted pretended to be Manchester United officials working with manager Sir Alex Ferguson.
Another conman was impersonating the chief talent scout for Chelsea to trick naive teenagers into wiring him cash.
They prey on the thousands of amateur players who post their details online hoping to be spotted by English agents.
Victims are often duped into sending money in the false belief that they are paying official registration fees to have a trial to play for their favourite English Premier League clubs.
The fraudsters simply pocket the money and disappear.

Read also :

'I was victim of Nigeria football conmen'

Gavin Lee explains how Isaiah Akpan fell victim to a Nigerian scam.

"The memory of that incident always kind of shocks me," say Isaiah Akpan.
He shakes his head as he recalls the gamble he took in the hope of achieving his dream of football stardom in the richest league in the world, the English Premiership.
Instead of taking the first step to sporting fame and fortune, he fell victim to conmen who left him penniless - stranded and alone in a foreign country.