Between 1995-1998, Emmanuel Nwude posed as the Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria. He then contacted the manager of Banco Noroeste, which is a large bank in Brazil.

His reason?

Emmanuel wanted to sell the bank an airport that was being built in Nigeria. The price for the airport was $242M.

The manager of the bank, Nelson Sakaguchi, was very interested. But there was just one problem. The airport didn’t exist, and there were no plans for it to ever exist.

The bank manager wasn’t aware of this of course and so had no problem handing over $191 million in cash and putting the rest of the fee in the form of future interest.

The bank would eventually catch on though, and Emmanuel was arrested.