The Notorious Emmanuel Nwude

The most infamous scammer you know is probably Hushpuppi. But did you know that before Hushpuppi, there was the notorious Emmanuel Nwude? He was a former director of the Union Bank of Nigeria. The guy had a good job; clearly, not everybody gets to be the director of a bank, but he got greedy and managed to pull off the third largest heist in banking history, stealing the whooping sum of 242 million dollars between 1995 and 1998 after he defrauded Nelson Sakaguchi and the Brazillian bank Banco Noroeste Brazil by selling them a fake airport. He convinced them to invest in a fake airport, which wrecked them so bad that the bank had to close down.
I am sure the big question on your mind is, how did he manage to pull this off? Well, he impersonated the manager of the bank Paul Ugwoma. He told the manager of the Brazilian bank that he would give him a $10 million commission once the airport was constructed.
The airport was never constructed, and the money went to Nwude and his accomplices, who used it to acquire property and paint their town red, throwing lavish parties and becoming the big guys in town.
Nwude enjoyed his loot for years until another bank, Santander doing a takeover of Banco Noroeste, launched an investigation and traced suspicious activity on particular accounts to Lagos. Nwude was busted and picked up by the newly created EFCC in 2003.
This man decided to add more to his crimes by attempting to bribe EFCC chairman at the time Nuhu Ribadu, with $75000. The chairman refused to take the money, and additional bribery charges were added to the 86 counts of fraud and 15 counts of bribery charges he was already facing.
As if that wasnʼt enough, he tried to kidnap a prosecution witness, talk about the storyline of a Nollywood movie.
He was eventually sentenced to 37 years in prison but was released in 2006.
You think he would turn a new leaf and leave the life of crime behind, but Nah, he went on to add a murder charge to the list of his crimes in 2016; he was later released on bail.
This guy put Nigeria on the map for the wrong reasons before internet fraudsters or yahoo boys came on to the scene. And he almost got away with it; you can even say he did because he didnʼt stay long in prison and tried to recover some of his assets, claiming he had acquired them before the heist.