In March 1995, Nelson Sakaguchi, Director for the Brazilian bank Noroeste, received an incredibly lucrative offer from the Central Bank of Nigeria. They wanted him to invest in the construction of an airport in Nigeria’s capital city, Abuja. After meeting with high-ranking Nigerian officials, Sakaguchi agreed to invest a whopping $50 million into the project. There was just one tiny problem. The whole thing was a giant scam, and one that would end up costing Noroeste a quarter of a billion dollars.
How was this possible, and who could have pulled off such an insane scheme? Get ready for a shocking tale of deceit, greed, and 120,000 white pigeons. This is the story of the man who sold an imaginary airport for $242 million.
Who Is Emmanuel Nwude?
Just 4 years after pulling the biggest con of his life, Nigerian businessman and criminal mastermind Emmanuel Nwude was one of the wealthiest men in Nigeria. He spent lavishly on cars, businesses and mansions all over the world, and to an outsider, appeared to sit at the pinnacle of corporate success.
Little did anyone know it was all built on a massive scam, and it wouldn’t be long before this wily con artist's empire came crashing down around him. But before we get to that, we’d better start at the beginning. Who exactly was Emmanuel Nwude? Not much is documented about his early life, but we do know Emmanuel was born into a modest family in Southeastern Nigeria in 1955. Despite growing up without any formal education in law or finance, he became a successful businessman, specializing in real estate and car sales.
With a growing list of connections, seemingly natural talent, and a heap ton of charisma, Emmanuel had become Director at the Union Bank of Nigeria by 1995. Pretty impressive resume.
Yet he dreamed of something greater, something he couldn’t achieve through legal means. So, with help from an accomplice, Nzeribe Okoli, he devised a plan to pull off one of the biggest bank fraud crimes in history.
Selling A Fake Airport
His master scam started with a simple fax to Nelson Sakaguchi’s office in São Paulo, Brazil. Okoli sent the fax, claiming to be one Tafida Williams, the Director of Budget and Planning at Nigeria’s Ministry of Aviation. He wrote that they were interested in pursuing Noroeste Bank as a potential backer for constructing an international airport in Nigeria's new capital, Abuja.
Just four years prior, Nigeria had changed its capital city from Lagos, a move that had rapidly transformed Abuja into one of the fastest-growing cities in Africa. As such, a brand-new airport there had the potential to make some serious moolah. To be on the ground floor of such a lucrative project was not the kind of proposition Sakaguchi could simply ignore. But in reality, there was no airport, no Tafida Williams, and no chance he was going to get any money.After a quick back and forth, it was agreed that he’d travel to London to meet with officials from Nigeria’s Central Bank, the biggest and most important bank in the country, to discuss investing. And so, the groundwork was laid. However, the next step was going to be much tricker to pull off, Emmanuel and his accomplice would have to meet Sakaguchi in person.While Sakaguchi wasn’t known as a particularly warm character, he was well-regarded in the world of international banking and had been a trusted hand at Noroeste for the last 11 years. In other words, he wasn’t an easy mark. Therefore, Emmanuel needed to pull out all the stops to have any chance of fooling him. For this, he’d need more help, from people with better acting skills than Okoli.
Enter Nigerian couple Christian and Amaka Anajemba. Emmanuel had presumably first run into this power couple while working in finance, and he called upon them now to aid him in his nefarious scheme. The plan was simple, if outrageously audacious. Emmanuel would pose as Paul Ogwuma, the Governor at the Central Bank of Nigeria. His two accomplices would pretend to be the Director of International Remittance, Rasheed Gomwalk, and the director’s wife. Together, the three of them would convince Sakaguchi of their legitimacy and get him to hand over the insane amount of $50M.
Crazy, yes. But could it be so crazy it actually worked? There was only one way to find out. Emmanuel, Christian, and Amaka boarded a plane to London, ready to attempt one of the most insane scams the world has ever seen.After arriving in England, Sakaguchi stepped out of Heathrow Airport to find a limousine parked outside waiting for him. It’d been sent by Emmanuel to pick him up and whisk him off to a luxury hotel for their meeting, just one of the conniving conman’s tricks to convince Sakaguchi of how legit the whole thing was. Once he got to the hotel, a heavy-set man and his two companions greeted him. The man introduced himself as Paul Ogwuma and handed Sakaguchi a business card. Of course, the card was a forgery and Paul Ogwuma was actually Emmanuel Nwude, but Sakaguchi just smiled and accepted it.
But how could Noroeste’s renowned director fall for such an obvious trick? Well, it wasn’t obvious. This was in 1995, way before the days of Google and social media. So it’s not as if he could’ve pulled up a photo of what the real Paul Ogwuma looked like before the meet. Sakaguchi knew Ogwuma by reputation, and this man looked the part, acted professional, and had even sorted the limousine and hotel. He had to be the real thing, right?
Plus, he had the Director of International Remittance and his wife alongside him! The dollar signs were firmly in Sakaguchi’s eyes. After exchanging pleasantries, Sakaguchi followed the terrible trio to their suite, and from there, Emmanuel began fleshing out the exact details of the project. With his accomplices backing him up, they provided a wide array of forged documents with government seals and letters of authorization. These, coupled with Emmanuel’s legitimate experience as a director at the Union Bank, all helped to lull Sakaguchi into a false sense of security. Then, they hit him with the figure, they wanted the huge investment of $50 million into their new airport. Considering Noroeste only had around $500 million total in capital, this was no small ask.The stakes were unbelievably high for Sakaguchi. If he invested all that money and didn’t get his returns, the bank, and its customers, would be crippled. As such, Emmanuel knew he’d need one final push to make him accept. To sweeten the offer, he promised him $10 million in commission upon completion of the airport. Talk about an impressive bonus. And he also asked for a comparatively small $35,000 up front which he promised to grow into $39M and send straight back. Clearly swayed by Emmanuel’s persuasive charm and the prospect of making such a huge amount of money, Sakaguchi agreed. And just like that he signed the documents, authorising an initial transfer of $35,000, with the rest to come in bigger instalments later. He had no idea that he’d just made the worst decision of his life.
Meanwhile, Emmanuel and his team of crooks could hardly contain their excitement, they were flying back home rich. For Sakaguchi however, his initial excitement quickly turned to doubt. Despite sending over the initial sum of money, he received a fat load of nothing in return. But Emmanuel promised him there would be no issue, so long as he kept sending more. So, worried about losing the bank’s initial investment and with dollar signs in his eyes, Sakaguchi agreed to send the much bigger sum of $4.65M in several instalments between May and June 1995. As you can imagine, Emmanuel and co were ecstatic. Back in Nigeria, Christian and Amaka started spending insane amounts of money on luxury items like diamond-studded watches, bulletproof sports cars, and palatial homes across the country. Amaka became something of a socialite, mingling with other socialites and politicians and loving every second.Emmanuel, on the other hand, was more ambitious with his sudden windfall. While the other scammers had bought some real estate, he focused on buying lots, not just in Nigeria, but in North London and Southern California as well. It wasn’t long before the crooked business mogul had built a sprawling empire of properties, using Sakaguchi’s steady stream of income as a resource for making even more cash.
Also, he managed all of this from the penthouse of an 11-story high-rise he owned in Central Lagos, making him sound more like a cartoon villain than a real person. But Emmanuel wasn’t satisfied with just being rich, he also wanted political influence. Leveraging his fortune, he started shaking hands with some of the most powerful people in the country, all of whom either believed he’d made his money legitimately or looked the other way.
He became a key financier for certain Nigerian political parties and supposedly developed a close relationship with the country’s then Vice President, Abubakar Atiku. Meanwhile, the Noroeste funds kept pouring in. Over the next few years, Sakaguchi was squeezed for as much money as possible. When the initial $50 million investment was fully paid, Emmanuel simply invented fake roadblocks on construction, ones that could always be solved by even greater injections of cash. Whether it was to resolve facilitation fees or to pay bribes, every new reason played on Sakaguchi’s ignorance of Nigerian construction. Wouldn’t Noroeste’s board of directors have smelled something fishy at this point? Well, they might have if they knew any of it was even happening. Sakaguchi had kept the entire project a secret and taken steps to hide every transfer of money.
Transactions above $6 million would’ve needed approval, so he simply transferred smaller sums of $3 to 4 million at a time so no one would know. But why didn’t he tell anyone? And why did he keep sending money without any proof of a return on his investment? Well, we can’t say with 100% certainty as he’s never said himself. But it’s safe to assume it was a combination of factors. For one, greed. He really seems to have believed he’d be netting himself a personal fortune once the airport was built, and if he told people about it, that could’ve been jeopardized. Secondly, even after seeing no returns after the first couple of investments, he probably clung to the hope that he would eventually see them. The alternative was admitting he might’ve been bamboozled, losing his job, and facing prison time, a pretty terrifying prospect. The more money he paid, the harder it was to get out. Finally, Emmanuel was well known for his silver tongue, who knows what sweet nothings he’d been whispering in Sakaguchi’s ear to keep him quiet.
Regardless, the money kept pouring out into increasingly shadier accounts across the world. Sakaguchi deposited money into the Cayman Islands, the UK, Switzerland, Hong Kong, Nigeria and the US. Okoli would then move the overseas money into Nigerian bank accounts, making everything appear legitimate. In Nigeria alone, the conmen had made 17 different accounts for shuffling their funds. This helped Emmanuel to make investments without fear of suspicion and obscure the real source of his income. As for the banks? Despite the huge sums of money pouring in, they chose to ignore any red flags in favor of keeping their rich customers happy. It’s impressive when you ignore how sinister it all is.However, the stress and pressure that came with sending all that money, keeping it a secret, and not receiving anything in return began to take a terrible toll on Sakaguchi. As his losses mounted and his despair and anxiety rose with them, he became increasingly desperate.
At his absolute lowest, he met with a Brazilian macumba priestess, a religion blending West African animism with Christianity. Her name was Maria Rodriguez, and Sakaguchi approached her for advice. Her solution was interesting. For the small payment of $20 million, Rodriguez would perform a protective ritual involving 120,000 white pigeons. She claimed it would protect Sakaguchi from fraudsters and improve his luck, something the banker clearly believed, because he coughed up the cash using more of the laundered monies. What the ritual actually entailed and how much poop that many birds would produce it's unsure, but it didn’t work.
Three years after his meeting with Emmanuel, Sakaguchi had made 94 unauthorized wire transfers to 17 different accounts. The amount had ballooned to almost five times the original $50M, at a monumental $242M, and it probably would’ve carried on spiraling, if not for one unexpected twist that nobody saw coming.In 1998, the Spanish bank Santander started making moves to acquire Noroeste for half a billion dollars. But first, they wanted them to investigate some inconsistencies that were showing up in their offshore deposit accounts. Why was half of the bank’s capital stored in the Cayman Islands? Sakaguchi panicked, if the last 3 years of documentation got out, it would reveal all his secret dealings and the game would be well and truly up.But after several days of deflecting, it was no good. Fellow director Jaime Lopez had gotten sick of his excuses, and during a heated argument grabbed Sakaguchi by the collar and demanded to see the bank's figures. Falling to the ground in resignation, Sakaguchi muttered, “You know, I have always had gambling in my blood.” This was the moment. After years of cover-ups and under-the-table transactions, the once well-respected financier finally broke down and gave up the documents.
Nobody was prepared for what they found. Looking through the last 3 years of overseas operations, it became clear to everyone that things were really, really bad. Almost half of Noroeste Bank’s total capital had been siphoned into what was clearly one giant scam. The airport that they’d supposedly invested all of this money into? It didn’t exist. No work had been done on it at all.Sakaguchi was fired, but unbelievably that wouldn’t stop him from falling for yet another of Emmanuel’s lies. After his dismissal, he was convinced to send $250,000 of his own money to one of the fraudster's accounts in order to finally get his $10M bonus. How much of a shmuck can you be? Believe it or not, he still didn’t get it.
Meanwhile, the Noroeste owners used money from their own pockets to narrowly save the Santander deal. Then, they went about trying to reclaim their lost funds and bringing the thieves to justice. Miami lawyer William Richey, an expert in the field of international asset recovery, was hired to lead a tracing and recovery effort for the stolen money. But piecing together financial transactions from over 300 bank accounts across the world was a daunting process.The first major breakthrough came after filing a criminal complaint in Geneva, Switzerland. They requested for one of the accounts that’d received $5 million from Noroeste to be frozen, preventing any outgoing transactions. While this was a relatively small amount of money, they gained access to the account's bank records, letting them see all the other accounts it’d interacted with. From there, they came across the name Emmanuel Nwude.But although Noroeste was hot on his trail, Emmanuel had little reason to be worried. Even if they could prove he’d committed the con, Nigeria had no system in place for prosecuting such financial crimes. He was hypothetically safe. However, for the first time in years, the net was closing in. And it wasn’t just Emmanuel who’d been implicated, his crew had too. Now more than ever, it was vital for the Nigerian mastermind to keep everyone in line. Which made what happened next all the more suspicious.In October 1998, just as Noroeste’s investigations were heating up, Christian Anajemba, the man who’d impersonated the Central Bank’s director, had a brutal car accident that he didn’t emerge from.
Considering how intimately he was involved with the crime, there’s no doubt Emmanuel would’ve been concerned about him talking. Was it foul play? We may never know for sure. But for the next few years, it seemed Emmanuel was untouchable.Unlike Noroeste, in 2001, the company collapsed despite saving the deal with Santander. The blow to its reputation coupled with the heavy financial losses proved too much. The next year, it was Sakaguchi’s time for retribution. In July 2002, the shamed financier was arrested at JFK airport and flown to Switzerland, where a significant portion of the stolen funds had been laundered. After over a year sat in detention, he finally admitted involvement in the fraud in October 2003. Following this, he was hit with six charges of money laundering and sentenced to two and a half years in prison. So you’re telling me all those pigeons did nothing?
All this time, Emmanuel was resting easy from the top floor of his high-rise. But that was about to change. The same year Sakaguchi was arrested, Nigeria established the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, or EFCC. Finally, there was an agency dedicated to tackling the very crimes Emmanuel was responsible for. And taking down someone as big as him would be a major step in gaining international legitimacy. So, as their first major case, the EFCC began relentlessly pursuing legal action against the kingpin and his remaining accomplices.
It didn’t take long. In February 2004, Emmanuel, Nerine and Amaka were all arrested and charged with a whopping 86 counts of fraud before the Abuja High Court. The EFCC also seized a swath of Emmanuel’s assets, including his cars, mansions, malls and office buildings. They even took over $4 million worth of Italian marble he’d collected! If there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s to never trust someone who owns more than a million dollars’ worth of marble. Despite their sudden change in fortune however, Emmanuel and his crew seemed unfazed, with all three pleading Not Guilty to all charges. At first, things looked pretty good for them, their first trial was dismissed by an Abuja High Court Judge over a disagreement on the crime's jurisdiction. But they wouldn’t get to enjoy any freedom, the crooks were immediately rearrested and tried again in Lagos.It was time to get dirty. Convinced they could still wangle their way out of this situation, both Emmanuel and Amaka tried to bribe EFCC officials. Amaka went first, during a private meeting with the chairman, Nuhu Ribadu. To her delight, he accepted! Little did she know the meeting had been recorded and it was really just a setup.
Emmanuel, feeling brazen after believing Amaka’s bribe had worked, openly walked into the EFCC office and offered Ribadu half of what he’d stolen from Noroeste. This time, Ribadu straight up refused. This encounter was recorded too, and the duo were landed with a further 15 counts of bribery on top of their current charges.The trial marched on, but still Emmanuel and co didn’t give up, far from it. After over a year of courtroom battling, in September 2005 the courthouse was thrown into chaos when it received word of a bomb threat, forcing everyone inside to evacuate.
There was no bomb, but among the people being escorted out was a key witness for the prosecution, Seyi Ogunleye, who had documents relating to the case on him. A court official reportedly watched as some large men approached Seyi before throwing him into the back of a bus and speeding off. He was later found on the Third Mainland Bridge roughed up and with all of his documents stolen. Well that’s not suspicious at all.
Despite this setback, the trial continued just 24 hours later, and the prosecution showed no signs of slowing down. Eventually, it all became too much for Amaka. In July 2005, she finally admitted to her crimes, surrendered all her stolen assets, and was sentenced to 2 and a half years in prison. You ask me, that’s far too lenient. Regardless, this was not a good look for Emmanuel.Even now though, with his accomplices steadily toppling, the egotistical fraudster was still convinced he could beat the charges.
That is, until the final nail in the coffin came along in the form of a familiar face. That’s right, our man Nelson Sakaguchi was flown all the way to Nigeria to give testimony. As he told the courtroom how he’d been defrauded by the colossal con, it finally dawned on Emmanuel that his time was up. After entering a plea agreement to secure a more lenient sentence, both he and Okoli both pled guilty and were convicted on the 18th of November 2005, putting an end to one of the largest cases of bank fraud in history.Okoli was sentenced to 12 years in prison, while Emmanuel received a whopping 25 years. On top of this, his corporate and personal bank accounts were frozen, and his properties were seized and sold to pay back $120 million as restitution to Noroeste’s customers. Finally, after almost a decade and countless hours of investigations, Emmanuel was moving from a penthouse to the big house.
So, justice was finally served, right? Well don’t get used to it. While it might appear like he was sentenced to 25 years, Emmanuel was actually sentenced to 5 individual 5-year sentences, all to be served simultaneously. So what, he only actually ended up serving 5 years? No! You can scratch that as well. Unbelievably, Emmanuel only served a single year before being released in 2006. And remember all those seized assets? Just after his release, the slippery scumbag went back to court and managed to re-claim a load of them. He argued that he’d earnt some of the seized money through legitimate means before the scam so it was rightfully his, and somehow won with that logic. Some say, to the tune of over $50 million. That’s one of the most frustrating outcomes possible. But it’s not quite the end of this wild tale.So, where are the big players now? Amaka served her time and seemingly made good use of the political connections she’d built when she was a socialite. In 2016 she transitioned from life as a prisoner to that of a government official, becoming the Managing Director of the Enugu State Waste Management Agency. That’s right, somehow she managed to get into politics. Politicians and criminals really are that similar?
There’s no word on what Nzeribe Okoli and Nelson Sakaguchi are up to, but presumably they’re keeping a low profile. Which, perhaps unsurprisingly, is the last thing
Emmanuel Nwude has been doing. In 2016, he was detained for his involvement in a land dispute that led to destruction of police property and the death of a security guard. Yet again, Emmanuel got away with barely a scratch, he was granted bail after just 4 months in jail.Then, five years later in 2021, he was taken to court again, this time on 15 charges of forging documents relating to property fraud. It seems old habits die hard. When questioned about his past criminal behavior, he claimed he had no idea where the $242 million had come from. Who hasn’t had a quarter of a billion dollars suddenly appear in their bank account for no reason? It’s hard to say what Emmanuel will get up to next, but it’s pretty obvious he’s never going to change his ways.
If you were amazed at the story of how Emmanuel Nwude sold a fake airport, you might want to read about the
sneakiest fraudsters of all time. Thanks for reading!
