Woman Pleads Guilty to Scamming Nigerian Scam Artists
But the Australian says she had no idea that she was playing a role in the larger online scheme.
| Posted Thursday, Feb. 23, 2012, at 4:05 PM
Photo by Robyn Beck/AFP/Getty Images.
Australia's Courier Mail brings us this rather ironic piece of news to brighten our day: An Australian woman nearly made off with more than $30,000 after pulling her own scam on a bunch of Nigerian scam artists.
Sarah Jane Cochrane-Ramsey pleaded guilty Thursday to one count of aggravated robbery and will be sentenced next month for her failed attempt at online robbery. The 23-year-old apparently signed up as an "agent" for the car-selling Internet scam back in March 2010, allowing the Nigerians to deposit the dirty money from their "sales" straight to her Australian account. Under the agreement, she would keep 8 percent and then transfer the rest to a Nigerian account. Instead, she kept all of the cash, most of which she reportedly spent on herself.
Perhaps even more curiously, Cochrane-Ramsey told the judge Thursday that she had no idea that she was involved in any scam besides her own, denying herself the defense that she was somehow attempting to give her fellow scammers a taste of their own medicine. She was caught when the car buyers who were being ripped off went to the police, who traced the cash back to Cochrane-Ramsey's account.
