Musa Baffa Bashir, 35, admitted to Muslim leaders that he had been paid by their opponents to create fake nude pictures of them, police said. He was arrested on Wednesday.
Bashir had already been paid $5,000 by four of seven politicians afraid that the scammer’s digital representations of them cavorting with prostitutes would be considered real.
The scheme eventually was thwarted when the savvy governor of the northern province, Kebbi, tipped off police to a fake meeting with Bashir for in which he said he would make a payment.
“[The governor] named a hotel in Kano where our men went under the guise of giving him the money," said Sadiq Dalhatu, head of the State Security Service.
Bashir admitted to the blackmail charges, saying that his previous businesses had failed and that he needed to make ends meet.
Bashir’s previous endeavors were not revealed, but he said he’d already known the officials. “I took advantage of my earlier contacts with the governors and concocted these lies,” he said.
Reuters has reported that Nigerian Internet scams have in the last 10 years become one of the country’s top five moneymakers.