June 30, 2006 -- Five Londoners and one former resident face fraud charges after a probe of 'phoney' offer.

A version of the Nigerian letter scam, a phoney investment offer that's bilked greedy people out of billions of dollars, has apparently migrated to Southwestern Ontario.

Five Londoners -- including a former math teacher at Laurier secondary school -- and a man who used to live in London face fraud charges after OPP investigators uncovered a scheme that saw people province wide fork over more than $100,000 to access a non-existent "secret" Canadian government bank account.

"It's Nigerian letter-type stuff," said London-based fraud expert Ray Porter.

The well-known email scam dupes people by selling entry into a Nigerian prince's hefty bank account.

In this case, 15 contributors from across Ontario -- many of them couples from London, Middlesex County, Norfolk County and Belleville -- handed over thousands of dollars to dip into the non-existent federal bank account, said OPP Det. Sgt. Dan Rowbotham.

They also bought into a phoney "debt elimination program" that promised to wipe out their money woes and offered bankruptcy protection, Rowbotham said.

Provincial government forms usually used to register liens against loans were illegally used in this scheme -- a tactic Rowbotham said is highly unusual.

"(They were told) that they would be protected from bankruptcy, that their debt would be eliminated, and that they could access money," Rowbotham said.  "If is sounds too good to be true, it probably is."

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