LAGOS: Nigerian authorities have arrested a man who posed as a CNN correspondent in an effort to con politicians into giving him money in exchange for airtime.

Claiming he was working on a documentary for the American news channel, Paul Yempe set up a series of interviews with officials in southern Nigeria’s Bayelsa state who hold the purse strings to state coffers awash with petrodollars.

The oil-rich state is served by poorly paid journalists who routinely collect bribes to write gushing stories about their sponsors, or poisonous ones about their sponsors’ rivals.

“He [Yempe] was parading himself as a correspondent of CNN who was following some ongoing oil strikes there,” Bayelsa police spokesperson Alex Akhigbe told the Guardian. “He had actually travelled from another state where he lives, so it’s possible he’s had been going up and down the place doing this.”

Yempe’s luck ran out when he arrived at the energy commissioner’s office at the same time as the local chairman of the National Union of Journalists. “He walked in and said he was a CNN reporter,” said Tare Akuno, head of the local NUJ chapter. “I welcomed him and wondered why he failed to report to the NUJ secretariat first. I asked him for his camera but he said he is using his mobile handset as a recorder.”

Another witness in the room added: “The reporter started fumbling and his attitude fuelled suspicion. When he was asked to produce his camera, he said he wanted to conduct the interview through his [mobile phone] handset.”

The 36-year-old was arrested after producing only a card for a local radio station. Enforcement officers, who said investigations were ongoing, declined to comment on how much money may have exchanged hands, saying only that Yempe had “defrauded a few commissioners”.

Years of soaring economic growth have failed to translate into jobs for Nigeria’s swollen youth population—an economic gap that has been filled by a boom in fraud.

The west African country is notorious for online scams in particular. Last year researchers discovered foreign tricksters frequently pose as Nigerians to put off all but the most gullible victims.

As online security tightens, big-league scammers have increasingly targeted the opaque oil sector, which has enriched a small elite.

A security worker in Port Harcourt, capital of Nigeria’s oil-producing coast, said up to a dozen foreign businessmen a year were lured to “fake business meetings” by elaborate swindles.

“It’s not just crude kidnapping. The boys have offices, company logos, the works. By the time a businessman comes to Nigeria for the meeting, they can be held until a ransom has been paid. You’re talking of anything from $5,000 to $200,000 [for ransoms].”

Sociologist Joshua Aransiola said many of the extortionists focus exclusively on the rich pickings offered by the oil sector.

“The main victims of Nigerian scams are Nigerians; the scammers themselves are victims. These are smart university graduates who see [fraud] as their only option,” said Aransiola, who has been the target of a crime syndicate he had been investigating.

Though the number of victims fell last year, cyberfraud cost the Nigerian economy an estimated $13.5 billion in 2012.

By arrangement with the Guardian