200 Foreign Nationals Arrested in London Every Day

David Cameron has been ­accused of letting down crime victims by failing to deport ­foreign ­crim­inals… as arrests of non-British suspects soar.

New figures showing that 200 foreign suspects are arrested every day in London has put paid to false claims by the Tory leader that swift action would be taken to deport offenders.

A study shows the country’s largest police force ­arrests 200 people who do not hold a British passport every day, a rise of 23 per cent in the past two years. In contrast, the number of foreign criminals deported has fallen by 13 per cent since the Tory-led coalition came to power.

Labour’s Shadow Immigration Minister Chris Bryant ­attacked the ­Government’s record, saying: “Anyone ­coming here should stick by the rules or face the ­consequences. It’s ­successful prosecutions and swift deportations that count.

“Depressingly, the Tories are now removing fewer foreign ­offenders than ­before, and more are ­absconding. Yet again they’re letting down the police and the public.”

A Freedom of Information request to London’s ­Metropolitan Police revealed that they held more than 72,500 non-British nationality suspects last year.

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Immigrant crimewave

Jacqui Smith has called all 43 chief constables to an urgent summit on crime involving immigrants, it has emerged.The Home Secretary has also ordered a full investigation of the problem by the Government’s Migration Impacts Forum.

It follows a series of warnings by chief constables that they do not have the resources to cope with a crimewave linked to foreign nationals – who are committing up to one in every five offences in one police force area.

Details of the summit emerged in a letter from Miss Smith to Ken Jones, president of the Association of Chief Police Officers. •

The letter says: “A number of chief constables have expressed public concern about the impact of migrants on police resources.”

She wants him to arrange for all chief constables to meet her to voice her concerns.

It will be seen as proof the Home Office is prepared to listen to the pleas by chief constables for extra cash.

The inquiry by the MIF – which is considering whether migrants are placing too much strain on public services – will follow in July.

Last month, it emerged that Britain’s highest ranking black policeman had warned Miss Smith his force was struggling to cope with a rise in crime by immigrants.

Read more…

• Only 10% of policing tasks require fully trained officers, claims radical review

Mike Fuller, the Chief Constable of Kent, said that “migration surges” had contributed to an increase of more than a third in violent crime over five years to 7,800 incidents in 2007.

Crisis talks: Home Secretary Jacqui Smith is worried immigration is fuelling crime

In a leaked letter, he said the Government’s failure to increase his budget to match

the population rise will have a “negative impact on performance”.

Other chief constables have given similar warnings, including Cambridgeshire’s Julie Spence.

She said the effect of immigration had seeped into all areas of policing. Migrants with ‘different standards’ got into difficulties because they were unfamiliar with traffic laws.

Police had also noticed a growth in prostitution, generated by the arrival of large numbers of single men.

Mrs Spence said: “The influx of migrants from Eastern European countries is placing a huge strain on resources The new communities have certainly brought greater complexity to the pattern of crime, and are a strain on existing resources.

“A lot of these communities land without any attention and are expected to absorb into the landscape.

“As police, we have to adapt all the time to deal with the problems.”

In the Metropolitan Police area, foreign nationals are responsible for more than one in five crimes.

Around a third of all sex offences and a half of all frauds in the London area are carried out by non-British citizens.

The biggest offenders are Poles, who have moved to Britain in record numbers since the expansion of the EU. In the first six months of 2007 they were responsible for 583 violent attacks and 32 sex offences.

Romanians, who joined the EU in January last year, are fifth on the list with more than 1,000 offences – an eightfold rise on the same period in 2006, according to Metropolitan Police figures for solved crimes.

Miss Smith’s letter said she believes the issues raised by chief constables are broader than just immigrants committing crime.

They also have concerns about new arrivals being victims or witnesses to offending.

A Home Office spokesman said: “Understanding the impacts of migration on communities is essential which is why the Migration Impacts Forum was set up. We need to strike a new balance in Britain’s migration policy, weighing the economic benefits with frontline feedback about wider impacts.”

• Violent gangs see the police as a ‘minor irritant’ to their activities and “almost an irrelevance“, a senior policeman has warned.

David Lindley, deputy chief constable of Leicestershire, said that a shortage of officers meant fewer arrests are being made.

He revealed that officers are trying to crack down on up to 20 gangs caught up in drugs, robberies and turf wars in Leicester.

But due to a lack of resources, “we are dipping in and out of these investigations,” he added. “We have seen a reduction in the number of arrests, not because our officers are less productive but simply because there are fewer of them.”

Leicestershire Police Authority meets today to discuss increasing council tax payments to provide funding for more officers.

• Chief constables should show “entrepreneurial” spirit and obtain sponsorship for police dogs and cars, Sir Ronnie Flanagan will say today.

His report on police reform will criticise red tape for keeping 3,000 officers off the streets.

The former RUC chief constable, now a Home Office policing adviser, wants police forces to secure sponsorship for everything from mobile phones and mountain bikes to alarms for domestic violence victims and even police dogs.

In a statement to MPs, Jacqui Smith will today accept his recommendations for slashing red tape. The stop form will be axed, but stop and search forms will remain.

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Lithuanian migrants send crime rocketing

The number of people from the Baltic country arrested for crimes ranging from drink-driving to murder has shot up since the expansion of the EU in 2004.

In 2003, just 151 Lithuanians were arrested, and 188 the following year, figures obtained under the Freedom of Information Act show.

But in 2005 the number more than tripled with 662 arrests as the influx of migrants from countries in the expanded EU got going.

Then in 2006, more than 901 people from the former Soviet bloc country were arrested by the Cambridgeshire force.

Figures for 2007 only cover June to August, when 91 Lithuanians were arrested.

The news comes as it has been revealed that Romanians are behind a £1 billion crime spree in the UK.

Andrejus Piliavecas, director of Lithuania’s Centre for Crime Prevention, spoke to the News from Vilnius about the rise.

He said: “The crime rate in Lithuania is not very high and is about average with other EU countries. The reason you are seeing an increase in Lithuanians committing crimes in Cambridgeshire is because many young people leave school and go to England to get a job where they can earn five times as much.

“But many cannot speak English and can’t find the job they expected so they commit illegal acts to get money.

“Another reason is the people who started their life of crime in Lithuania are too well known to the police here so they go to places like Spain, the Nordic countries and England to carry on there.

“Lithuania is only a country of three and a half million people so once you are known to the police it is harder to get away and the police here have got better in the last few years at catching criminals.”

The shock figures add more weight to Cambridgeshire Chief Constable Julie Spence’s continuing campaign for an extra £2 million to pay for 100 more officers.

A police spokeswoman said she will be meeting Police Minister Tony McNulty in early February.

A decade ago it would be rare to see names like Dainus Kigas in the pages of the News.

The Lithuanian was burnt to death when someone threw a petrol bomb into his van while he slept in it by a roadside in Wisbech in June last year.

His death, believed to be the result of a feud within the Lithuanian community, highlighted the growing international dimension to crime in a county that has absorbed 50 per cent of the migrant population in the East of England.

Organised criminals from Eastern Europe are also thought to be behind the upsurge in human trafficking and prostitution.

And some new arrivals have been carrying knives because they were used to doing so in their native countries. Many drink and drive because they can get away with it more easily at home.

Lithuanians top Cambridgeshire’s drink-drive shame list, as the News revealed this month. They have clocked up an ll-fold rise in alcohol-related crime since 2002.

Linus Pekarskas, a Lithuanian community support officer with Cambridgeshire police, said: “There is a problem with a lot of people from Eastern European countries drinking and driving. It is just a different culture.”

Mrs Spence said immigrant communities from the new EU states had “different standards” from the UK. She said: “We can identify a significant rise in drink-drive, which was down to people thinking that what they did where they came from, they could do here.”

Mrs Spence also said “feuds” between rival foreign gangs added to the cost of dealing with crime.

And in November Lithuanian woman Daiva Hammond, of Minerva Way, was convicted of shouting and taking a swing at an ambulance woman before pushing her and slapping her face.

Hammond had been drinking.

The number of crimes committed by Lithuanians and other migrants prompted Mrs Spence to meet the country’s ambassador Vygaudas Usackas last October.

Mr Usackas said: “We all clearly have a great deal of work to do to ensure closer relations and a harmonious existence moving forward.”

Arrests of Poles have also risen dramatically, with 477 in 2006.

Gangs of Romanians are behind a £1 billion crime wave in Britain. The number of crimes they committed since Romania joined the EU a year ago has surged by 530 per cent. The gangs smuggle in children and use them as pickpockets. Dozens of them were freed by police in dawn raids in Slough on Thursday.

In Cambridgeshire, however, the number of Romanians arrested in 2006 was just 12 – a fraction of the 901 Lithuanians.

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BRITAIN MUST ‘FACE UP’ TO IMMIGRANT CRIMEWAVE

 

ITALY is to begin deporting immigrants who “represent a danger to the public” – and tonight urged Britain to follow suit.

Demands for action have been fuelled by the brutal rape and killing this week of the 47-year-old wife of a naval officer on the outskirts of Rome – the latest crime attributed to mass immigration from eastern Europe.

The woman was attacked near a railway station and left for dead in a nearby ditch. An unemployed 24-year-old Romanian has been arrested in connection with the killing, after police found him in possession of her handbag.

Under the new laws, which some experts would like to see adopted in Britain, local authorities will have the power to deport EU citizens “who represent a threat to public security”.

The first such expulsions could be arranged this week, after Italian president Giorgio Napolitano signed the legislation last night.

More than 1,000 Romanians a month have been arriving in Italy since since Romania joined the EU this year.

Rome’s mayor, Walter Veltroni, says that three quarters of the people arrested for murder, rape and robbery in the capital this year have been Romanian. In addition, 76 murders, not including this week’s killing, have been blamed on immigrants from Romania.

However, since Romania entered the EU, robberies and sex attacks in the eastern European country have fallen dramatically – muggings by more than a quarter.

The inspector general of the Romanian police force, Gheorghe Papa, is reported in the Italian press as saying that “more liberal laws [in western Europe] have probably encouraged criminal elements to go abroad”.

Leading left-wing politicians, including Fausto Bertinotti, speaker of the house, last night described the new deportation powers as “unconstitutional” and threatened to vote them down when they are up for review before the Italian parliament in 60 days’ time.

And left-wing newspapers described Veltroni’s comments as racist.

But Italian premier Romano Prodi said EU nations, including the UK, should face up to the new crime wave.

He called on Europe’s home office ministers to meet and find a solution.

“We politicians have to show we are serious about maintaining order in our territory,” he said.

This week a UK high court judge refused the British government’s request to expel the EU national – an Italian – who murdered head teacher Phillip Lawrence in 1995.

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Jails adapted for foreign inmates

The Prison Service has converted two jails so that they hold only foreign national prisoners, it is revealed. Bullwood Hall, Essex, and Canterbury Prison, Kent, have been taking foreign offenders since the 2006 crisis over prisoners who had not been deported.

The Ministry of Justice said the jails which have immigration and language services were part of a plan to deport as many foreign prisoners as possible.

More than 11,000 of the 81,000 prison population are foreign nationals.

In 2006 the then Home Secretary Charles Clarke was sacked over the Home Office’s failure to process the cases of 1,000 foreign national prisoners who could have been eligible for deportation.

The decision to convert two prisons just for foreign inmates came as the department reviewed its deportation strategy.

Concentrating on foreign nationals in one prison makes it easier for that prison and also lessens the problems elsewhere Lord David Ramsbotham

But the move to set up the two specialist prisons has come with virtually no publicity.

The names of the jails emerged in a briefing by the Chief Inspector of Prisons, Anne Owers. Bullwood Hall is now holding 154 prisoners, while a further 284 are at Canterbury.

About 11,000 others are detained elsewhere alongside British prisoners.

Ms Owers said the two prisons had been given specific services for foreign inmates, including language support and advice on immigration issues.

She said it was easier to provide these services in one place and the move was similar to other specialist prisons such as those for juveniles.

The Independent Monitoring Board, which reports on prison conditions, said staff at Bullwood Hall had been unprepared for the move, but at Canterbury it was working well.

Higher costs

A spokesman for the Ministry of Justice, which has been responsible for prisons since the break-up of the Home Office, said the two jails each had five immigration officials brought in to speed up deportation procedures.

Ministers would also review how well the two prisons were working to decide if any more should be set up, although the costs per inmate were higher at more than £38,000.

“The foreign national prisoner prisons are higher than the average cost of a category C trainer [prison] due to additional costs for translators and other specialist services,” said a spokesman.

Justice minister David Hanson said the jails were an experiment to see if deportations could be speeded up.

He said agreements had been set up with more than 100 countries which meant prisoners deported part-way through their sentences could serve the remainder in their home country.

Talks were ongoing to try to establish agreements with more countries including Jamaica, Nigeria and Vietnam, he said.

He told BBC’s Breakfast 1,500 foreign criminals were deported in 2005, rising to 2,500 last year and it was expected 4,000 would be deported this year.

If the government kept its promise to deport them, there would be extra space in our jails and no reason to release other prisoners early Nick Herbert

The Home Office said it was “currently taking legislation through the House of Commons to improve the speed with which individuals are identified and processed for deportation”.

Shadow justice secretary Nick Herbert said: “If the government kept its promise to deport them [foreign prisoners], there would be extra space in our jails and no reason to release other prisoners early.”

Former chief inspector of prisons Lord David Ramsbotham said the converted prisons made sense but more were needed.

“Concentrating on foreign nationals in one prison makes it easier for that prison and also lessens the problems elsewhere,” he told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.

“But when you look at the figures there are a huge number of prisoners in Wormwood Scrubs and Wandsworth, and having two prisons holding about 500 prisoners out of a total of about 11,000 is merely scratching the surface of a bigger problem.”

Colin Moses, of the Prison Officers Association, said it would be better to put resources into moving them through the system more quickly and repatriating them.

But Paddy Scriven, general secretary of the Prison Governors Association, said it made it easier to manage the prison purse and stopped foreign inmates from being so isolated.

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Government finally admits: Immigration IS placing huge strain on Britain

Immigrants are placing a huge strain on public services, Labour finally admitted.

Crime is up, schools are struggling to cope with Eastern European children, community tensions are rising, health services are coming under enormous pressure and house prices are being driven up, the Government said.

The findings, based on a survey of public sector workers, are the first published by ministers after ten years of an ‘open door’ immigration policy.

• The expert’s verdict: Influx costs every UK household £350 a year
• Many immigrants ‘earning more than their British counterparts’

Immigration Minister Liam Byrne said it was clear communities were ‘unsettled‘ – and a ‘new balance’ should be struck between the needs of the economy and society in general.

Those questioned for the survey said busy A&E departments in the East of England, North Lincolnshire and Southampton were being used in place of doctors’ surgeries. HIV and TB were singled out as diseases specifically linked to immigration.

Workers in the North West, South West and Scotland all warned of increased ‘community tensions’ in areas unused to large- scale immigration.

Critics have accused the Government of giving no thought to the strain being placed on schools and hospitals, as ministers focused solely on boosting the economy with cheap workers from overseas.

Movre recently, they have been afraid to gauge the scale of the problem after woefully underestimating the number of arrivals from Eastern Europe.

Now, after finally carrying out the research, the scale of social impact has been revealed – albeit in what ministers admit is ‘patchy’ detail.

The report, to be presented to the Government’s new Migration Impacts Forum today, fails to put figure on the full cost to society of mass immigration – which is increasing the population by 200,000 every year.

A Home Office study found that migrants helped to grow the economy by £6billion last year. But experts said this did not mean they had boosted GDP per head, a crucial measure.

Shadow Home Secretary David Davis said the report ‘confirms what everyone knows but what Labour have been in denial about – that immigration has a real impact on the housing and public service infrastructure‘.

Mr Byrne said: ‘The pace of change, particularly in communities that do not have a history of absorbing migrants, has been unsettling and has created challenges for public services.

‘This new approach will help us take migration decisions in a new way, starting with our policy towards Romania and Bulgaria.’

Citizens of the two former Communist countries had restrictions imposed when they joined the EU in January this year, limiting the number of work permits to 20,000.

These are due to be reviewed by the end of this year and Mr Byrne said this would be the first decision in which the Government would seek to strike a ‘new balance’.

He appears certain to say the restrictions should remain in place. The final decision will be taken by Cabinet in the next few weeks.

Mr Byrne said the impact on public services would also be taken into account when ministers decide how many work permits to give to migrants from outside the EU, when a new points-based system is introduced next year.

Matthew Elliott, chief executive of the Taxpayers’ Alliance, said: ‘This report clearly shows that immigration is having a massive impact on public services at a local level.

‘Ministers are finally admitting that, in certain areas, immigration is causing higher crime, poorer educational provision and overstretched healthcare.‘

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Crime figures reflect a clash of two cultures

Ten years ago, the residents of Cambridgeshire would rarely, if ever, have opened their local paper to find reports about defendants with names like Robertas Bartkus, Darius Janavicius or Marius Genulevicius.

The Lithuanian trio, all convicted of driving offences in recent months, are one sign that life and crime in the county have changed rapidly.

The murder in June of another Lithuanian, Dainus Kigas, brought the point home somewhat more dramatically. Mr Kigas, 35, was burnt to death when someone threw a petrol bomb into his van while he slept in it by a roadside in Wisbech. His death, believed to be the result of a feud within the Lithuanian community, reflected the growing international dimension to crime in a county that has absorbed 50 per cent of the migrant population to have settled in the East of England.

Organised criminals from Eastern Europe are thought to be behind the upsurge in human trafficking and prostitution, credit card fraud and cannabis cultivation. But new arrivals are committing other, less serious offences, often as a result of cultural differences rather than criminal intent.

Some have been found to carry knives, because they were used to doing so in their native countries. Others have a lax attitude to drink-driving: the number of non-UK nationals arrested for suspected drink-driving in the north part of the county rose from 57 in 2003 to 306 last year.

Linus Pekarskas, a Lithuanian community support officer with Cambridgeshire police, said: “There is a problem with a lot of people from Eastern European countries drinking and driving. It is just a different culture. We have to hand out leaflets and explain everything to them.

“Many people don’t make the effort to learn English so they don’t integrate very well. People who don’t learn English cannot get anything other than factory jobs.

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Migrants put more strain on to police

MIGRANTS now make up more than one in 10 registered workers or benefit claimants in Cambridge.

For the first time figures show a breakdown of nationalities and the huge numbers of migrants who have flocked to the area.

The findings, based on National Insurance registrations, show that 12 per cent of registered workers in Cambridge are migrants who have come to the city since 2004.

The figures will add fuel to Chief Constable Julie Spence’s call for more cash to deal with the influx of migrants.

Since 2005, 7,200 migrants, many with families – which are not counted in the figures – have registered to work in Cambridge including 1,720 Poles, 410 French, 400 Germans and 280 Lithuanians.

In the East of England, 53,370 migrants registered to work during 2006/7 including 19,840 Poles, 1,190 French, 830 Germans, 1,390 Slovaks and 3,120 Australians.

A record 1.8 million foreign workers have come to Britain since 2004. More than 700,000 have settled in towns and rural districts in eastern and southern England.

Peterborough now has 13 per cent of its registered workers coming from abroad.

The report comes just weeks after Mrs Spence demanded an extra £2 million a year to recruit 100 more officers to tackle the expanding population and crimes linked to foreign immigrants.

She says her force has been “short changed” by £17.4 million since 2002 because of a population surge.

There are now about 100 languages spoken in Cambridgeshire.

Mrs Spence said the influx had caused an increase in community tension as well as an international element to crime.

Cannabis farming, often associated with Vietnamese gangs, human trafficking and prostitution, often associated with Eastern Europeans, and offences such as credit card skimming and internet fraud, are all being tackled by police.

Cultural differences, with some immigrants more likely to drink and drive or carry knives than British nationals have also caused problems.

Police translation costs have risen to £1 million a year and foreign prisoners in cells who fall ill and can’t explain their symptoms are giving police a £700,000 headache, the cost per year to call out doctors.

An independent report revealed the force needs 100 more officers to cope with its current workload.

But immigration is said to boost the economy by filling skills shortages and supplying cheap labour.

John Bridge, chairman of Cambridgeshire Chambers of Commerce, has welcomed the influx of migrant workers.

He said: “The key thing for business is that migrant workers have been very positive for the economy. We do have skill shortages in the area and migrant workers have happily come in to fill those jobs.

“The attitude and approach to work of migrants is often much more positive than UK workers, especially young people. They are just not being educated to prepare for work. Migrant workers have a can-do attitude and we welcome them.”

The National Insurance data found that 4.7 per cent of the UK workforce is now made up of migrants who have arrived since 2004 although some of the new arrivals may have since gone home.

Karen Dunnell, the chief statistician, told a House of Lords committee last week that a net rise of 1.4 million in the immigrant population over five years was balanced, in part, by emigration among Britons.

The Government has begun to take a tougher line on immigration amid fears of a backlash from voters. Applicants for work permits are likely to face English language tests.

Jim Paice, South East Cambridgeshire MP and the Tory party’s farming spokesman, said: “Migrants can make a huge contribution to the community especially those working on farms.

“But they do put a huge burden on the police and local public services, such as health end education, as Chief Constable Julie Spence has pointed out.

“These figures show that the Government needs to recognise these pressures in their funding to the police, councils and local health authorities.”

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Three arrested after swoop on suspected bogus colleges

A man and two women were arrested yesterday in an immigration raid on two suspected bogus colleges for foreign students.

The man, a college principal, was arrested on suspicion of obtaining leave to remain in the UK by deception while the two women, both college administrators, are suspected of breaching visa conditions.

Meanwhile, officers trawled through documents and computer files at the college site in Stratford, East London, while students were questioned over their visas and how long they had spent studying there.

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The raid follows a series of revelations by The Herald about a network of bogus colleges operating across the UK, with several raising suspicions in Scotland.

In September, one such college in Glasgow was struck off an official government register which allows it to bring overseas students into Scotland.

Commonwealth College in Glasgow had been registered with the Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills for more than a year, clearing it to recruit foreign students on short-term visas.

However, the college was removed from the list shortly after The Herald uncovered a series of discrepancies in courses it was offering and false claims made on its website about affiliations with professional bodies.

Yesterday’s raid involved a team comprising 35 immigration staff, police officers, HM Revenue and Customs and Trading Standards officers and was part of an ongoing series of operations into potentially bogus colleges.

The intelligence-led operation targeted Monteagle College and Lloyds College, which were both operating out of the sixth floor of the same business centre.

The colleges, understood to be on the government’s register of education providers, are thought to have about 600 students on their books.

However, officers found one empty classroom, no teachers and one student who had turned up to hand in a letter.

The government-run Border and Immigration Agency is investigating privately run colleges to check that they are not enabling people to remain in the UK without the correct visas or helping students who are using such colleges to stay in the country.

A student questioned by officers yesterday, who was from Bombay, India, said the fees for his business course were £4000 a year.

He admitted to officers: “I don’t come regularly. I haven’t been here for the last two weeks.”

As the two arrested women were led away, officers were on their way to their homes to check their passports, marriage certificates and other documents.

In the midst of the raid, another two students arrived to register at the colleges. One, also from India, told officers he had already paid £3500 for a business course.

The agency will now check the visa status of all students registered at the colleges.

A spokesman said visas would be revoked from students if they were failing to attend classes.

Tony Smith, the agency’s regional director for London and the South-East, said :”We would have expected to see a number of classrooms and teachers. There is one empty classroom, no teachers and one student. This is not operating as you would expect a college to operate.”

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Hat tip: Aberdeen

 

Gullible Britons conned out of £3.5bn by Nigerian gangs

ENDEMIC corruption has been blamed for Nigeria’s notorious reputation as the centre of global mass-marketing fraud, which was yesterday revealed to cost the UK at least £3.5 billion a year.

The Office of Fair Trading said more than 3.2 million Britons had handed over cash after receiving scam e-mails, letters and phone calls.

The figures came as the Serious Organised Crime Agency (SOCA) said more than 4,500 fake cheques, postal orders and bank drafts worth more than £8 million had been seized as part of a month-long crackdown against fraudsters in Nigeria.

Nigeria has become synonymous with corruption, where it is a way of life.

“Here you pay for everything but the view,” a Nigerian told a visitor to Abuja, the country’s new capital.

Around the city and other urban centres, policemen run “mobile courts”, running purges against offences that are unpredictable – one day “illegal” windscreen wipers, another “illegal” bumpers, the next “illegal” tyres. The only thing to do is to pay the required bribe and gain the greeting: “You are free to go. The court is over.”

Chinua Achebe, the renowned Nigerian novelist, said: “Nigerians are corrupt because the system under which they live today makes corruption easy and profitable. They will cease to be corrupt when corruption is made difficult and inconvenient.”

Martin Meredith, an African historian at St Anthony’s College in Oxford, said Nigerian corruption had its roots in the colonial era. He said: “Many Nigerians regarded government institutions as olu oyibu – white man’s business, an alien system that could be plundered when necessary.

“The same attitude prevailed with the coming of independence [in 1960]. The state was regarded as a foreign institution that could be used for personal and community gain without any sense of shame or need for accountability.

“Plunderers of the government treasury were often excused on the grounds that they had only ‘taken their share’. Every facet of Nigerian society was eventually permeated by corruption.”

Police said several arrests had been made and thousands of bank accounts in Britain – used by criminals to give their “work” legitimacy – had been closed.

SOCA said many victims were elderly or vulnerable, some of whom had lost their life savings after being repeatedly targeted over several years. Such victims are put on “sucker lists” by fraudsters, which are shared with other criminals.

The scams usually involve e-mails claiming to be from a person needing help in transferring large sums of money overseas, promising the recipient a share in return for their bank account details.

However, fraudsters also place job adverts online, pretending to be legitimate companies, seeking to recruit people to “process payments” for them. Other scams involve internet auction sites such as eBay.

Paul Evans, the executive director of SOCA, said: “Mass- marketing fraud is a low-value, high-volume crime. Relatively small amounts of money quickly add up to big profits.

“You may take the view that there is ‘one is born every minute’, but in some of the e-mails we have intercepted there are appalling examples of quite vicious exploitation, including threats of violence.

“However the scam works, the best way to stop it is to make sure that you never give out your bank details to anyone you don’t know – however plausible their story.”

FAKE CHEQUE COSTS HAIRDRESSER HER HOME

CHARLENE Moir advertised her car for sale on internet auction site eBay – and ended up losing her rented home.

The hairdresser from Aberdeenshire lost thousands of pounds after receiving a fake cheque.

Ms Moir, 24, was sent a £5,500 cheque for her Peugeot 106 and the cost of shipping it abroad from a “buyer” in Singapore. The transaction involved her sending on £3,700 of the amount for the export.

However, despite checking with the police and being told by her bank the cheque had cleared, the bank later informed her the cheque had bounced. By this time she had withdrawn the money and sent it on.

She was told that a cheque “clears on goodwill” after three days, but the money does not arrive in a customer’s account until six day after it has been received by the bank.

Ms Moir, from Banchory, said: “The money had been collected by a man in Nigeria. I was absolutely livid but there was nothing I could do about it. The bank said I was responsible and wanted the money back, plus interest.”

She said she was forced to move back in with her parents.

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Hat tip: Aberdeen