A multi-million pound Nigerian fraud scam has been traced to the Midlands, the Sunday Mercury can reveal. Standard Trust Securities, which advertises its offices in Wellington Street, Birmingham, sends spam e-mails to people, asking for help in transferring funds through their bank accounts. The company claims to be a "high-level courier and security company with capabilities for transferring consignments and cargoes, as well as providing solid financial solutions." But the Sunday Mercury can reveal that the shadowy business has links with a number of Nigerian fraud scams, which cost Britons in excess of £8 million in 2002. The scams often claim they are seeking help to transfer the money from the bank accounts of dead relatives. One of the Standard Trust emails, full of grammatical mistakes, states: "My client made a term deposit of the sum of Ten Million and Six Hundred Thousand United States Dollars only with a security company Standard Trust Securities with the hope of transferring this sum to his country as soon as he is on his annual vacation. "However, since his death I have made several enquiries to your embassy to locate any of my late client's extended relatives. "I have contacted you to assist me in repatriating this fund. "In order to advert this negative development I now seek your permission to have you stand as a next of kin to my Late Client so that the fund would be released and paid into your account as his next of kin." We discovered the Standard Trust Securities website, which claims the organisation has corporate offices in Birmingham and storage offices in Holland. But after checking on the three Birmingham addresses, we found only an old people's home, a warehouse and residential homes. John Weston, who runs a website which exposes e-mail scams, said the Birmingham link could be just a mailing address. "The criminals in question are normally Nigerians based in Amsterdam," he said. "They use UK company names and UK addresses in much of their mail because they feel this will reas-sure their potential victims. "Some are based in London. But sometimes they just visit the UK to post their surface mail or to pick up mail." The Sunday Mercury has handed its dossier of information to West Midlands Police. | 
