419...
Have you ever been contacted by someone who claimed to be a citizen of an African country and who needed your help with a business transaction that would involve millions of dollars for you? Welcome to the Nigerian scam! I'd only ever read about this before, but last week I finally received an e-mail myself! Just like the many examples I'd read about, this e-mail was full of grammar and spelling mistakes, didn't include my name, and even though the sender claimed to be working for an important African firm, the e-mail address belonged to Hotmail. Not to mention that the story was ridiculous, as always.
The history of the Nigerian scam (advance fee fraud) is an old one. According to Wikipedia, it dates back to the 18th or 19th centuries, at which time it was still called the "Letter from Jerusalem". In 1830, people received letters starting with "Sir, you will be doubtlessly be astonished to be receiving a letter from a person unknown to you, who is about to ask a favour from you . . .' and then talking about acasket containing 16,000 francs in gold and the diamonds of a late marchioness. In the 1920s, the Spanish Prisoner scam was widely popular: "businessmenn were contacted by an individual allegedly trying to smuggle someone connected to a wealthy family out of a prison in Spain. In exchange for assistance, the scammer promised to share money with the victim in exchange for a small amount of money to bribe prison guards."
The Nigerian scam (also called "419 fraud" after the section of the Nigerian penal code which addresses fraud schemes) works like this: Letters or e-mails, claiming to be from an African country (Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Ghana, Ivory Coast) are sent to addresses taken from large mailing lists. They promise rich rewards for helping officials of a government (or bank, or government agency, or just members of a particular family) out of an embarrassment or a legal problem. Typically, the pitch includes an open promise that if you help them, you'll get to keep a startling percentage of a multi-million dollar sum as a reward. (Here you can find detailed descriptions of the system as well as examples of letters/e-mails.)
Common elements in the Nigerian scam are fake cheques, requests of wire transfers with Western Union/MoneyGram, anonymous communication (language errors, web-based e-mail, fax transmissions) and invitations to visit the country of the sender to meet "government officials", associates of the scammer or the scammer themselves.
If you think that the victims of the Nigerian scam is a very small group of especially naive, greedy, dishonest, rich and stupid people, read this article. Some just want to help Tsunami victims, orphans, or even victims of the 419 scam. Some are so convinced by the story that they don't heed the warnings. Some consider the investment 100% safe and think that the sums they need to pay are insignificant compared to the revenue. And after having paid so much, they think "I've come this far and paid so much money, so I'm going to pay this bill as well, it will be the last one." Only it isn't. Some victims still believe that the money they were promised exists at the other end of the world.
The group of 419 victims is a relatively small one - and it needs to be, as Microsoft scientist Cormac Herley has found out (a pdf-file of his study can be found here). The spam mails of the "Nigeria Connection" are so unrealistic and silly because the scammers want to achieve maximum profit with minimum effort. Even those who consider the offers realistic have several questions at the beginning, which means further e-mails, phone calls, and work. The aim of the fraudsters isn't to make as many people as possible reply to the first e-mail, but to find out the most gullible of them. Those who believe that a Nigerian prince wants to give them a large part of their fortune are very likely to be tricked further. It's a profitable theory: On average, a 419 victim loses 20,000 dollars in a fraud case, and the more than 250,000 scammers reap in over 1.5 billion dollars per year.
And sometimes, the scam doesn't end with a huge loss of money. In 2008, a Japanese businessman was lured to Johannesburg, South Africa, and kidnapped for a ransom. In 2003, a 72-year-old man from the Czech Republic, shot and killed an official at the Nigerian embassy in Prague because the Nigerian Consul General couldn't return the 600,000 dollars that the Czech man had lost to a Nigerian scammer. In 2004, the body of a man from Cyprus was found in South Africa - the man had been beaten, mutilated, set on fire and murdered, and even after he was dead, the fraudsters demanded money from his family.
Fortunately, there are several people in this world who have declared war on the scammers and in some cases actually managed to turn the tables on them. This is an account of an anti-scammer who managed to get the scammer to transfer 3 dollars to him! This anti-scammer even got 5 dollars! And this one was actually sent a gold sample! Yes, occasionally even criminals who specialise on tricking others are not completely safe from getting tricked themselves.
Reading recommendations/assorted links:
The history of the Nigerian scam (advance fee fraud) is an old one. According to Wikipedia, it dates back to the 18th or 19th centuries, at which time it was still called the "Letter from Jerusalem". In 1830, people received letters starting with "Sir, you will be doubtlessly be astonished to be receiving a letter from a person unknown to you, who is about to ask a favour from you . . .' and then talking about acasket containing 16,000 francs in gold and the diamonds of a late marchioness. In the 1920s, the Spanish Prisoner scam was widely popular: "businessmenn were contacted by an individual allegedly trying to smuggle someone connected to a wealthy family out of a prison in Spain. In exchange for assistance, the scammer promised to share money with the victim in exchange for a small amount of money to bribe prison guards."
The Nigerian scam (also called "419 fraud" after the section of the Nigerian penal code which addresses fraud schemes) works like this: Letters or e-mails, claiming to be from an African country (Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Ghana, Ivory Coast) are sent to addresses taken from large mailing lists. They promise rich rewards for helping officials of a government (or bank, or government agency, or just members of a particular family) out of an embarrassment or a legal problem. Typically, the pitch includes an open promise that if you help them, you'll get to keep a startling percentage of a multi-million dollar sum as a reward. (Here you can find detailed descriptions of the system as well as examples of letters/e-mails.)
Common elements in the Nigerian scam are fake cheques, requests of wire transfers with Western Union/MoneyGram, anonymous communication (language errors, web-based e-mail, fax transmissions) and invitations to visit the country of the sender to meet "government officials", associates of the scammer or the scammer themselves.
If you think that the victims of the Nigerian scam is a very small group of especially naive, greedy, dishonest, rich and stupid people, read this article. Some just want to help Tsunami victims, orphans, or even victims of the 419 scam. Some are so convinced by the story that they don't heed the warnings. Some consider the investment 100% safe and think that the sums they need to pay are insignificant compared to the revenue. And after having paid so much, they think "I've come this far and paid so much money, so I'm going to pay this bill as well, it will be the last one." Only it isn't. Some victims still believe that the money they were promised exists at the other end of the world.
The group of 419 victims is a relatively small one - and it needs to be, as Microsoft scientist Cormac Herley has found out (a pdf-file of his study can be found here). The spam mails of the "Nigeria Connection" are so unrealistic and silly because the scammers want to achieve maximum profit with minimum effort. Even those who consider the offers realistic have several questions at the beginning, which means further e-mails, phone calls, and work. The aim of the fraudsters isn't to make as many people as possible reply to the first e-mail, but to find out the most gullible of them. Those who believe that a Nigerian prince wants to give them a large part of their fortune are very likely to be tricked further. It's a profitable theory: On average, a 419 victim loses 20,000 dollars in a fraud case, and the more than 250,000 scammers reap in over 1.5 billion dollars per year.
And sometimes, the scam doesn't end with a huge loss of money. In 2008, a Japanese businessman was lured to Johannesburg, South Africa, and kidnapped for a ransom. In 2003, a 72-year-old man from the Czech Republic, shot and killed an official at the Nigerian embassy in Prague because the Nigerian Consul General couldn't return the 600,000 dollars that the Czech man had lost to a Nigerian scammer. In 2004, the body of a man from Cyprus was found in South Africa - the man had been beaten, mutilated, set on fire and murdered, and even after he was dead, the fraudsters demanded money from his family.
Fortunately, there are several people in this world who have declared war on the scammers and in some cases actually managed to turn the tables on them. This is an account of an anti-scammer who managed to get the scammer to transfer 3 dollars to him! This anti-scammer even got 5 dollars! And this one was actually sent a gold sample! Yes, occasionally even criminals who specialise on tricking others are not completely safe from getting tricked themselves.
Reading recommendations/assorted links:
- The story of a 419 victim, from his own point of view.
- The Ethics of Scam. Questions and answers about 419 scams.
- Tons of information about 419 scams, including examples of e-mails and descriptions of the many varieties of stories.
- The Lads from Lagos. A group of people who dedicated themselves to writing back to waste the scammers' time. There are some hilarious letters there, and in some cases the scambaiters actually managed to trick the scammers without losing any money themselves!