Advance fee fraud
Encyclopedia
An advance-fee fraud is a confidence trick
in which the target is persuaded to advance sums of money in the hope of realizing a significantly larger gain. Among the variations on this type of scam are the Nigerian Letter (also called the 419 fraud, Nigerian scam, Nigerian bank scam, or Nigerian money offer, or Fifo's Fraud), the Spanish Prisoner
, the black money scam
as well as Russian/Ukrainian scam (also widespread, though far less popular than the former). The so-called Russian and Nigerian scams stand for wholly dissimilar organized-crime
traditions; they therefore tend to use altogether different breeds of approaches.
Although similar to older scams such as the Spanish Prisoner
, the modern 419 scam originated in the early 1980s as the oil-based Nigerian economy
declined. Several unemployed university students first used this scam as a means of manipulating business visitors interested in shady deals in the Nigerian oil sector before targeting businessmen in the west, and later the wider population. Scammers in the early-to-mid 1990s targeted companies, sending scam messages via letter, fax, or Telex. The spread of e-mail and easy access to e-mail-harvesting
software significantly lowered the cost of sending scam letters by using the Internet. In the 2000s, the 419 scam has spurred imitations from other locations in Africa, Philippines
, Malaysia, Russia
, Australia
, Canada
, United Kingdom
, and the United States.
The number "419" refers to the article of the Nigerian Criminal Code (part of Chapter 38: "Obtaining Property by false pretences; Cheating
") dealing with fraud. The American Dialect Society
has traced the term "419 fraud" back to 1992.
The advance-fee fraud is similar to a much older scam known as the Spanish Prisoner
scam in which the trickster tells the victim that a rich prisoner promised to share treasure with the victim in exchange for money to bribe prison guards. An older version of this scam existed by the end of 18th century, and is called "the Letter From Jerusalem" by Eugène François Vidocq
, in his memoirs.
Insa Nolte, a lecturer of University of Birmingham
's African Studies Department, stated that "The availability of e-mail helped to transform a local form of fraud into one of Nigeria's most important export industries."
Embassies and other organizations warn visitors to various countries about 419. Countries in West Africa
with warnings cited include Nigeria
, Ghana
, Benin
, Côte d'Ivoire
(Ivory Coast), Togo
, Senegal
and Burkina Faso
. Countries outside West Africa with 419 warnings cited include South Africa
,
Spain, and the Netherlands
.
[ Name] ", "Your assistance is needed", and so on. The details vary, but the usual story is that a person, often a government or bank employee, knows of a large amount of unclaimed money or gold which he cannot access directly, usually because he has no right to it. Such people, who may be real but impersonated people or fictitious characters played by the con artist, could include, for example, the wife or son of a deposed African or Indonesian leader or dictator
who has amassed a stolen fortune, or a bank employee who knows of a terminally ill wealthy person with no relatives or a wealthy foreigner who deposited money in the bank just before dying in a plane crash (leaving no will
or known next of kin
), a US soldier who has stumbled upon a hidden cache of gold in Iraq, a business being audited by the government, a disgruntled worker or corrupt government official who has embezzled funds, a refugee, and similar characters. The money could be in the form of gold bullion
, gold dust, money in a bank account, blood diamonds, a series of checks or bank drafts, and so forth. The sums involved are usually in the millions of dollars, and the investor is promised a large share, typically ten to forty percent, if they assist the scam character in retrieving the money. Whilst the vast majority
of recipients do not respond to these e-mails, a very small percentage do, enough to make the fraud worthwhile as many millions of messages can be sent. Invariably sums of money which are substantial, but very much smaller than the promised profits, are said to be required in advance for bribes, fees, etc.—this is the money being stolen from the victim, who thinks he or she is investing to make a huge profit.
Many operations are professionally organized in Nigeria, with offices, working fax
numbers, and often contacts at government offices. The victim who attempts to research the background of the offer often finds that all pieces fit together. Such scammers can often lure wealthy investors, investment groups, or other business entities into scams resulting in multi-million dollar losses. However, many scammers are part of less organized gangs or are operating independently; such scammers have reduced access to the above connections and thus have little success with wealthier investors or business entities attempting to research them, but are still convincing to middle-class individuals and small businesses, and can bilk hundreds of thousands of dollars from such victims.
If the victim agrees to the deal, the other side often sends one or more false documents bearing official government stamps, and seal
s. 419 scammers often mention false addresses and use photographs taken from the Internet or from magazines to falsely represent themselves. Often a photograph used by a scammer is not of any person involved in the scheme. Multiple "people" involved in schemes are fictitious; the author of the "West African Advance Fee Scams" article posted on the website of the Embassy of the United States in Abidjan
, Côte d'Ivoire believes that in many cases one person controls many fictitious personas used in scams.
A scammer introduces a delay or monetary hurdle that prevents the deal from occurring as planned, such as "To transmit the money, we need to bribe a bank official. Could you help us with a loan?" or "For you to be a party to the transaction, you must have holdings at a Nigerian bank of $100,000 or more" or similar. More delays and more additional costs are added, always keeping the promise of an imminent large transfer alive, convincing the victim that the money they are currently paying is covered several times over by the payoff. Sometimes psychological pressure is added by claiming that the Nigerian side, to pay certain fees, had to sell belongings and borrow money on their house, or by pointing out the different salary scale and living conditions in Africa, compared to the West. Much of the time, however, the needed psychological pressure is self-applied; once the victims have put money in toward the payoff, they feel they have a vested interest in
seeing the "deal" through. Some victims believe that they can cheat the con artist. This idea is often encouraged by the fraudsters who write in a clumsy and uneducated style which presents them as naive and easily cheated by a sophisticated Westerner.
The essential fact in all advance-fee fraud operations is that the promised money transfer never happens because the money or gold does not exist. The perpetrators rely on the fact that, by the time the victim realizes this (often only after being confronted by a third party who has noticed the transactions or conversation and recognized the scam), the victim may have sent thousands of dollars of their own money, and sometimes thousands or millions more that has been borrowed or stolen, to the scammer via an untraceable and/or irreversible means such as wire transfer
.
In extreme cases the victim may not realize that he or she has been defrauded. A version of the scam is for the thief to claim to have contacts to facilitate legitimate business loans; the victim here is not persuaded that he is doing anything illegal. The fraudster meets the victim, and must be able to act the part of a well-connected and experienced loan broker
. He asks for payment in advance, which is normal for large loans. Then the loan gradually falls through in a plausible way, and the victim may end up being defrauded of tens of thousands of dollars or pounds, thinking only that the deal simply failed. These frauds may go unreported, either because the victim does not realize he has been cheated, or due to reluctance to admit the facts. Because of "non-disclosure clauses" which may have been included in the fraudulent contract, reporting of the scam may be delayed until the victim becomes certain he has been cheated.
The spam e-mails perpetrating these scams are often sent from Internet café
s equipped with satellite Internet. Recipient addresses and e-mail content are copied and pasted into a webmail interface using a standalone storage medium, such as a memory card. Many areas of Lagos
, such as Festac, contain many cyber cafés that serve scammers; many cyber cafés seal their doors during afterhours, such as from 10:30 PM to 7:00 AM, so that scammers inside may work without fear of discovery.
Nigeria also contains many businesses that provide false documents used in scams; after a scam involving a forged signature of Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo in summer 2005, Nigerian authorities raided a market in the Oluwole section of Lagos. The police seized thousands of Nigerian and non-Nigerian passports, 10,000 blank British Airways
boarding passes, 10,000 United States money order
s, customs documents, false university certificates, 500 printing plates, and 500 computers.
During the courses of many schemes, scammers ask victims to supply bank account information. Usually this is a "test" devised by the scammer to gauge the victim's gullibility
.
Scammers often request that payments be made using a wire transfer
service like Western Union
and Moneygram
. The reason given by the scammer usually relates to the speed at which the payment can be received and processed, allowing quick release of the supposed payoff. The real reason is that wire transfers and similar methods of payment are irreversible, untraceable and, because identification beyond knowledge of the details of the transaction is often not required, completely anonymous.
Telephone numbers used by scammers tend to come from mobile phone
s. In Côte d'Ivoire
(Ivory Coast) a scammer may purchase an inexpensive mobile phone and a pre-paid SIM card without submitting subscriber information. If the scammers believed they are being traced, they discard their mobile phones and purchase new ones.
In Benin, Nigeria
ns operate scams with Beninese cooperating in the schemes.
Some crime syndicates employ fraudsters in the United States who conclude "deals" or threaten victims who try to leave deals.
The use of cheques in a scam hinges on a US law (and common practice in other countries) concerning cheques: when an account holder presents a cheque for deposit or to cash, the bank must (or in other countries, usually) make the funds available to the account holder within 1–5 business days, regardless of how long it actually takes for the cheque to clear and funds to be transferred from the issuing bank. The cheques clearing process normally takes 7–10 days and can in fact take up to a month when dealing with foreign banks. The time between the funds appearing as available to the account holder and the cheque clearing is known as the "float", during which time the bank could technically be said to have floated a loan to the account holder to be covered with the funds from the bank clearing the cheque.
The cheque given to the victim is typically counterfeit but drawn on a real account with real funds in it. With a piece of software like QuickBooks
and/or pre-printed blank cheque stock, using the correct banking information, the scammer can easily print a cheque that is absolutely genuine-looking, passes all counterfeit tests, and may even clear the paying account if the account information is accurate and the funds are available. However, whether it clears or not, it eventually becomes apparent either to the bank or the account holder that the cheque is a forgery. This can be as little as three days after the funds are available if the bank supposedly covering the cheque discovers the cheque information is invalid, or it could take months for a business or individual to notice the fraudulent draft on their account. It has been suggested that in some cases the cheque is genuine — however the fraudster has a friend (or bribes an official) at the paying bank to claim it is a fake weeks or even months later when the physical cheque arrives back at the paying bank.
Regardless of the amount of time involved, once the cashing bank is alerted that the cheque is fraudulent, the transaction is reversed and the money removed from the victim's account. In many cases, this puts victims in debt to their banks as the victim has usually sent a large portion of the cheque by some non-reversible 'wire transfer' means (typically Western Union) to the scammer and, since more uncollected funds have been sent than funds otherwise present in the victim's account, an overdraft
results.
Wire transfers via Western Union
and MoneyGram
are ideal for this purpose. The wire transfer, if sent internationally, cannot be cancelled or reversed, and the person receiving the money cannot be tracked. Other similar non-cancellable forms of payment include postal money orders and cashier's checks, but as wire transfer via Western Union or MoneyGram is the fastest method, it is the most common.
or keylogger computer viruses to gain login information for the e-mail address.
are commonly used tools of business, whenever a client requires a hard copy of a document. They can also be simulated using web services, and made untraceable by the use of prepaid phones connected to mobile fax machines or by use of a public fax machine such as one owned by a document processing business like FedEx Office/Kinko's
. Thus, scammers posing as business entities often use fax transmissions as an anonymous form of communication. This is more expensive, as the prepaid phone and fax equipment cost more than e-mail, but to a skeptical victim it can be more believable.
, scammers subscribe to these services using fraudulent registration details and paying either via cash or stolen credit card details. They then send out masses of unsolicited SMS'es
to victims stating they have won a competition/lottery/reward or like event and they have to contact somebody to claim their prize. Typically the details of the party to be contacted will be an equally untraceable email address or a virtual telephone number. These messages may be sent over a weekend when abuse staff at the service providers are not working, enabling the scammer to be able to abuse the services for a whole weekend.Even when traceable they give out long and winding procedure of procuring the reward (real/unreal) and that too with the impending huge cost of transportation and tax/duty charges.The origin of such SMS messages are often from fake websites/addresses.
A recent (mid 2011) innovation is the use of a Premium Rate 'call back' number (instead of a web site or email) in the SMS. On calling the number, the victim is first reassured that 'they are a winner' and then subjected to a long series of instructions on how to collect their 'winnings'. During the message there will be frequent instructions to 'ring back in the event of problems'. Needless to say the call is always 'cut off' just before the victim has the chance note all the details. Some victims call back multiple times in an effort to collect all the details. Needless to say, the scammer makes their money out of the fees charged for call.
, a US federally-funded relay service where an operator or a text/speech translation program acts as an intermediary between someone using an ordinary telephone and a deaf caller using TDD
or other teleprinter
device. The scammer may claim they are deaf, and that they must use a relay service. The victim, possibly drawn in by sympathy for a disabled caller, might be more susceptible to the fraud.
FCC regulations and confidentiality laws require that operators relay calls verbatim, and that they adhere to a strict code of confidentiality and ethics. Thus, no relay operator may judge the legality and/or legitimacy of a relay call, and must relay it without interference. This means the relay operator may not warn victims, even when they suspect the call is a scam. MCI
said that about one percent of their IP Relay calls in 2004 were scams.
Tracking phone-based relay services is relatively easy, so scammers tend to prefer Internet Protocol-based relay services such as IP Relay. In a common strategy, they bind their overseas IP address to a router or server located on US soil, allowing them to use US-based relay service providers without interference.
TRS is sometimes used to relay credit card information to make a fraudulent purchase with a stolen credit card. In many cases however, it is simply a means for the con artist to further lure the victim into the scam.
, PayPal
, or a banking site like Bank of America
or Natwest Bank for phishing
. Others represent fictional companies or institutions to give the scam credibility.
Though phishing
is a secondary interest of most scam operations, as the object of the scammer is to deceive the victim into sending the money through legitimate means, the use of websites for advance-fee fraud is common. For instance, a scammer may create a website for a fictional bank, then give the victim details to login to the site, where the victim sees the money the scammer has promised sitting in the account. The victim believes the scammer and sends the requested advance payments. Fake (or hijacked) websites are the centerpiece of false online storefront scams.
Another twist on scamming is where links are provided to real news sites covering events the scammer says are relevant to the transaction they propose. For instance, a scammer may use news of the death of a prominent government official as a backstory for a scam involving getting millions of dollars of the slain official's money out of the country. These are real websites covering legitimate news, but the scammer is usually not connected in any way with the events reported, and is simply using the story to gain the victim's sympathy.
or that the scammers will provide the visa. If the victim does this, the scammers have the power to extort money from the victim. Sometimes victims are ransomed or, as in the case of the 29 year old Greek George Makronalli who was lured to South Africa, killed.
Another scheme involves advertising fake academic conferences and enticing academics to apply to present papers. It is a common practice that the conference subsidizes or pays for the air travel of academics who present papers at the conference, but does not pay for accommodation. One way the scammer baits the hopeful attendee is they offer free air travel to the victim, but only as long as they pre-pay for hotel accommodation. The scammer can give a variety of reasons that the accommodation must be pre-paid — primarily that they don't trust the victim will attend the conference unless he pays upfront.
Any goods or services may be used in the scam, but the idea is that the scammer baits the victim with a good deal, but the victim must pay upfront and electronically.
. The scammer sends the victim a check or money order, the victim cashes it, sends the cash to the scammer via wire transfer, and the scammer disappears. Later the forgery is discovered and the bank transaction is reversed, leaving the victim liable for the balance. Schemes based solely on check cashing usually offer only a small part of the check's total amount, with the assurance that many more checks
will follow; if the victim buys in to the scam and cashes all the checks, the scammer can win big in a very short period of time. Other scams such as overpayment usually result in smaller revenues for the scammer, but have a higher success rate as the scammer's request seems more believable.
Some check-cashing scammers use multiple victims at multiple stages of the scam. A victim in the US or other "safe" country such as the UK or Canada (often the country in which the cashing victim resides) is sometimes approached with an offer to fill out checks sent to them by the scammer and mail them to other victims who cash the check and wire the money to the scammer. The check mailer is usually promised a cut of the money from the scammer; this usually never occurs, and in fact the check mailer is often conned into paying for the production and shipping costs of the checks. The check information has either been stolen or fictionalized and the checks forged. The victim mailing the check is usually far easier to track (and prosecute) than the scammer, so when the checks turn up as fraudulent, the one mailing them usually ends up not only facing federal bank fraud and conspiracy charges, but liability for the full amount of the fraudulent checks. Because the check mailer is taking the
fall, the scammer is even less likely to be caught, which makes it a popular variation of the scam for scammers in nations with tougher anti-fraud laws.
A variation of the check-cashing scheme involves owners of vacation rentals. The scammer expresses interest in renting the unit for a much higher than normal rate, usually for an upcoming honeymoon, business trip, etc. The scammer also offers to pay all fees "up front," as soon as the unsuspecting unit owner agrees to the windfall rental. Eventually a very official looking money order/cashier's check arrives. About this time the scammer requests that a portion of the rental fee be returned for some compelling reason...wedding called off, death in the family, business failure, etc. Due to the supposed crises, it is requested that most of the rental fee be returned via wire transfer. The unit owner is encouraged to retain "a fair amount" to compensate him for his time. The wire transfer is sent, only to find out later that the official looking check was indeed fake and the entire amount is charged back to the unit owner by his bank.
, an Instant messenger, or a social networking site. The scammer claims an interest in the victim, and posts pictures of an attractive person (not themselves). The scammer uses this communication to gain confidence, then asks for money. The con artist may claim to be interested in meeting the victim, but needs cash to book a plane, hotel room, or other expenses. In other cases, they claim they're trapped in a foreign country and need assistance to return, to escape imprisonment by corrupt local officials, to pay for medical expenses due to an illness contracted abroad, and so on. The scammer may also use the confidence gained by the romance angle to introduce some variant of the original Nigerian Letter scheme, such as saying they need to get money or valuables out of the country and offer to share the wealth, making the request for help in leaving the country even more attractive to the victim.
In a newer version of the scam, the con artist claims to have 'information' about the fidelity of a person's significant other, which they will share for a fee. This information is garnered through social networking sites by using search parameters such as 'In a relationship' or 'Married'. Anonymous e-mails are first sent to attempt to verify receipt, then a new web based e-mail account is sent along with directions on how to retrieve the information. A scam from Malaysia involves a woman alleging to be half American half Asian with a Father who is American but has passed away. After communication begins the target is immediately asked for money to pay for her sick mother's hospital bills. Also requests are made to help her get back to America. In every case these scammers never have a webcam so you can't verify that they are the one truly in the picture they have sent, and offers to send a camera to them by postal mail (instead of money to buy it) are met with hostility. Domestic scams involve meeting someone on an online match making service. The scammer initiates contact with their target who is out of the area and requests money for bus fare. The scam can get very elaborate and the scammer is very convincing. They don't have a webcam and have excuses for why they do not give address and telephone number. One "woman" scamming had money sent to a generic name like Joseph Hancock alleging she could not collect the money due to losing her international passport. After sending the money the victim is given bad news that they were robbed on the way to the bus stop by two men and the victim feels compelled to send more money. The person never visits their victim and is willing to chat with their victim through a chat client as long as their victim is foolish enough to believe the scam and send more money.
Much like the various forms of overpayment fraud detailed above, a new variant of the lottery scam involves fake or stolen checks being sent to the 'winner' of the lottery (these checks representing a part payment of the winnings). The winner is more likely to assume the win is legitimate, and thus more likely to send the fee (which he does not realize is an advance fee). The check and associated funds are flagged by the bank when the fraud is discovered, and debited from the victim's account.
In 2004 a variant of the lottery scam appeared in the United States. Fraud artists using the scheme call victims on telephones; a scammer tells a victim that a government has given them a grant and that they must pay an advance fee, usually around $250, to receive the grant.
soliciting donations to help the victims of a natural disaster, terrorist attack (such as the Sept. 11 World Trade Center
attack), regional conflict, or epidemic
. Hurricane Katrina
and the 2004 tsunami
were popular targets of scammers perpetrating charity scams; other more timeless scam charities purport to be raising money for cancer, AIDS
or Ebola virus
research, children's orphanages (the scammer pretends to work for the orphanage or a non-profit associated with it), or impersonates charities such as the Red Cross or United Way. The scammer asks for donations, often linking to online news articles to strengthen their story of a funds drive. The scammer's victims are charitable people who believe they are helping a worthy cause and expect nothing in return. Once sent, the money is gone and the scammer often disappears, though many attempt to keep the scam going by asking for a series of payments. The victim may sometimes find themselves in legal trouble after deducting their supposed donations from their income taxes. United States tax law
states that charitable donations are only deductible if made to a qualified non-profit organization. The scammer may tell the victim their donation is deductible and provide all necessary proof of donation, but the information provided by the scammer is fictional, and if audited, the victim faces stiff penalties as a result of the fraud. Though these scams have some of the highest success rates especially following a major disaster, and are employed by scammers all over the world, the average loss per victim is less than other fraud schemes. This is because, unlike scams involving a large expected payoff, the victim is far less likely to borrow money to donate or donate more than they can spare.
In a related variant, the scammer poses as a terminally ill mother, poor university
student, or other down-on-their-luck person and simply begs the victim for money for college tuition, to sponsor their children, or a similar ruse. The money, they say, will be repaid plus interest by some third party at a later date (often these third parties are some fictitious agency of the Nigerian government, or the scammer themselves once a payment from someone else is made available to them). Once the victim starts paying money to the scammer, the scammer tells the victim that additional money is needed for unforeseen expenses, similar to most other variants; in the case of the ill mother, the children will fall ill as well and require money for a doctor's care and medicine (many scammers go as far as to say that as the sponsor of the children, the victim is legally liable for such costs), where the student might claim that a dormitory fire destroyed everything they own.
impersonates the foremost "fraud related crime-fighters" in Nigeria, the EFCC (Economic and Financial Crimes Commission
), which not only adds credibility to the scam, but tarnishes the reputation of the EFCC once this second scam is discovered.
The scammer and victim exchange a few e-mails to build trust. They may even send (fake or stolen) photo IDs to further prove their credibility. Once it is established that the victim offers the right home for the pet, the scammer offers to ship the pet, and requests the victim only pay for shipping, or comes off the original price substantially to seem legitimate. The victim, who now has an emotional attachment to the pet, feels obligated and even happy to do so, as shipping is a small price to pay compared to the pet's full price at a shop or breeder. The scammer requests Western Union or MoneyGram (untraceable and irreversible) to keep the deal going in a timely fashion as the pet is ready to go to a new home and the victim is now excited. However, after wiring money, the victim does not receive the pet (as it does not exist), and if the victim does hear from the scammer again it is only for more money (to get animal out of airport holding/quarantine, "refundable" life-insurance fees or to pay unexpected vet bills that have come up) until the victim stops responding. This is extremely common currently in Nigeria and Cameroon.
Another type of scam that is beginning to appear is the selling of a pet by the victim. The scammer typically contacts the victim by a newspaper ad or through an online service with the aid of a call-relay service. After this call has been made, communication is done through email. As mentioned above, trust is built between the scammer and the victim by emails. The structure of the scam is that the seller of the animal (victim) will have the asking price of the animal plus the shipping price sent to him/her through a fake check. The victim will then deposit the check then wire the funds to the scammer through a Western Credit Union location. The "shipper" is often non-existent and described as being "private". Once the money has been wired, the scammer wins.
, has been plagued with scammers using advance-fee fraud and similar techniques, usually involving fake checks, to con people out of their money. Sometimes many scammers contact a person who is either attempting to buy or sell items on Craigslist, and attempt to perpetrate exactly the same scam. Many of the same elements as the Nigerian 419 scams are used often on Craigslist, including persons conducting transactions from outside the country, sending realistic looking bank checks, sending more money than is owed, and requesting that money be wired back to the scammer.
Another advance-fee method that has been used recently on Craigslist is where the scammer will contact someone selling an item and ask them to ship the item to a location outside the US, then provide the tracking number for the shipped item in exchange for payment. The seller then sends the item and provides the tracking number, after which the scammer never provides payment. Sometimes the scammer will approach someone offering a room or apartment for rent and pose as someone moving in to their area from overseas. They will create a scenario in which they are pressured to secure the room in advance, and ask if they can secure their occupancy with a deposit. The deposit check that they send will be a fake check for far more than the amount requested for a deposit. When the check arrives, the scammer will ask for a refund of the difference between the check they sent and the agreed upon amount. The fake check will bounce and the victim has lost whatever money they "refunded" to the scammer.
A similar scam exists on the rental model, particularly in the United Kingdom
- the scammer posts an ad on a classifieds site such as Craigslist or Gumtree
for an apartment or house for rent (and the rent is far below the normal market rate) with a fantastic description and pictures taken from other adverts or other websites. The victim contacts the scammer in order to secure a viewing, but is told that in order to do so they must go to a Western Union outlet, do a money transfer to a relative for the amount of the deposit and then provide a scanned receipt. Ostensibly this is to prove that the victim can afford the deposit before they view the apartment, and they'll get the money back after the viewing. But in actuality the property may or may not actually exist, and the receipt allows the scammer to collect the funds without any viewing ever taking place.
Alternatively, the scammer forwards a rental application, or asks for information typically given on a rental application, such as driver's license number, bank account information, Social Security Number, etc.
is ownerless property which has passed to the Crown
. In England and Wales
(other than the Duchy of Lancaster
and the Duchy of Cornwall
) this property is administered by the Bona Vacantia Division of the Treasury Solicitor's Department. Fraudulent emails and letters, claiming to be from this department, have been reported which inform the recipient that they are the beneficiary of a legacy but requiring payment of a fee before sending more information
or releasing the money.
Many legitimate (or at least fully registered) companies work on a similar basis, using this method as their primary source of earnings. Some modelling and escort agencies will tell applicants that they have a number of clients lined up, but that they require a "registration fee" of sorts to account for processing and marketing expenses, or so it is claimed, which is paid in a number of untraceable methods, most often by cash; once the fee is paid, the applicant is informed that the client has cancelled, and thereafter they never contact the applicant again.
said that an experienced scammer can expect to make at least several thousand dollars per successful scam letter.
Since 1995, the United States Secret Service
has been involved in combating these schemes. The organization does not investigate unless the monetary loss is in excess of 50,000 US Dollars
. However, very few arrests and prosecutions have been made due to the international aspect of this crime.
In 2006, a report by a research group concluded that Internet scams in which criminals use information they trick from gullible victims and commonly strip their bank accounts cost the United Kingdom
economy £150 million per year, with the average victim losing £31,000.
Between May 1992 and July 1994, a San Diego-based businessman, James Adler, was swindled out of $5.2 million by a Nigeria-based advance fee scam. In 2000, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit affirmed the trial court's findings that (1) various Nigerian government officials (including a governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria
) had been directly or indirectly involved; (2) the Nigerian government officials could be sued in U.S. courts under the "commercial activity" exception to the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act
; and (3) Adler's case was completely barred by the doctrine of unclean hands
because he had knowingly entered into a contract with the criminal purpose of helping Nigerian officials embezzle funds from their own government.
Nelson Sakaguchi, a director at the Brazilian bank Banco Noroeste, transferred hundreds of millions of U.S. dollars to Chief Emmanuel Nwude, Nigeria's most accomplished scammer. The scam led to at least two murders, including that of one of the scammers, Mr. Bless Okereke. The scam was the third biggest in banking history, after Nick Leeson
's activities at Barings Bank
, and the looting of the Iraqi Central Bank during the buildup to the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.
In 2008, an Oregon woman, Janella Spears, lost $400,000 to a Nigerian advance-fee fraud scam, after an e-mail told her she had inherited money from her long-lost grandfather. Her curiosity was piqued because she actually had a grandfather whom her family had lost touch with, and whose initials matched those given in the e-mail. Spears sent hundreds of thousands of dollars over a period of more than two years, despite her family, bank staff and law enforcement officials all urging her to stop.
says, "Although there is no serious physical injury, many victims of con-men speak of the betrayal as the psychological equivalent of rape". Victims may blame themselves for what has happened, resulting in overwhelming guilt and shame. If the victim has borrowed money from others to pay the scammer, these feelings are magnified. Further compounding the problem is the public opinion of scam letters and scam victims. Scam letters are often viewed as humorously moronic, and the people who fall for them equally so. The victim, having lost money through the scammer's manipulation of payment methods such as money orders or checks, may become distrustful of the financial system. Scam victims may stop trusting and giving money to churches, legitimate charities and, in the extreme, even service providers such as their electric company because of their requests for money. Some victims commit suicide
.
In other cases, the victim continues to contact the scammer after being shown proof that they are being scammed or even being convicted of crimes relating to the scam, having been drawn so deeply into the web of deception that their trust in what the scammer tells them overrides everything else in their life. Such victims are easy prey for future scams, digging themselves even deeper into financial and legal trouble.
after an extensive raid. An Internet service provider
noticed the increased e-mail traffic. None were jailed or fined, due to lack of evidence. They were released in the week of 12 July 2004.
On 8 November 2004, Nick Marinellis of Sydney, Australia, was sentenced to to years for sending Nigerian 419 e-mails.
In October 2006 the Amsterdam
police launched Operation Apollo to fight Internet fraud scams operated by West Africans and notably Nigerians. Following this investigation police have arrested eighty suspects, most of them from Nigeria
, and seized from their homes lists of e-mail addresses, as well as fake documents. On 16 June 2007, 111 people were arrested for being in the Netherlands
illegally and suspicion of fraud
, although their implication with the e-mail scams is yet unknown.
Authorities in Nigeria have been slow to take action and for many years nothing was done. Nigeria has a reputation for criminals being able to avoid convictions through bribery and rumours abounded of official connivance in the scams. In 2003 however the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission
(EFCC) was charged with tackling the problem. A couple of success stories including convictions in a large 419 case were reported in 2005.
Edna Fiedler, 44, of Olympia, Washington
, on 25 June 2008, pleaded guilty in a Tacoma court and was sentenced to 2 years imprisonment and 5 years of supervised release or probation
in an Internet $1 million "Nigerian check scam." She conspired to commit bank, wire and mail fraud, against US citizens, specifically using the Internet, and by having an accomplice
ship her counterfeit checks and money orders from Lagos
, Nigeria, last November. Fiedler shipped out $ 609,000 fake check and money orders when arrested and prepared to send additional $1.1 million counterfeit materials. The US Postal Service recently intercepted counterfeit checks, lottery tickets and eBay overpayment schemes with a face value of $2.1 billion.
In March 2009, agents from Spain's technological investigation squad, UDEF Central, arrested 23 people who were accused of defrauding 150 people in both the United States and Europe. According to the police, the suspects sent out 20,000 scam e-mails per day and had a list of the e-mail addresses of 55,000 potential victims in their possession.
In October 2009, the Nigerian government announced that they are launching "Operation Eagle Claw", a joint effort with Microsoft
to apprehend Nigerian 419 scammers.
, check kiting
, and embezzlement
are among the crimes committed to pay the advances, with an expectation of having the money to repay the unauthorized loans.
" to a Nigerian completely unaware of the Star Trek
television series.
Fall mugu (to):To be fooled, to become victim of advance-fee fraud
Flash of account:Cause a victim's bank account to temporarily show a large credit (which the bank reverses when they discover its false origins) to convince the victim the deal is legitimate.
Format:Scheme or script of an advance-fee fraud, e.g., the late dictator format, the next of kin format, the lottery format...
Guyman, guy:Con artist engaged in advance-fee fraud
Jokeman, Joker:A scam-baiter
Luxcini:An investment scam involving a line of men's luxury clothing based in Beverly Hills, California
Maga, mugu, mugun, mahi, magha, mahee, mayi, mayee, mgbada: Victim of advance-fee fraud ("Mugu" means "fool"—often used as an insult by scam-baiters
)
Modality: Method of funds transfer;
Oga or Chairman: Boss
Owner of the job, Catcher: Con artist who makes first contact with the victim, then passes him to another scammer to finish
Run: An illegal activity
Yahoo millionaire, yahoo boy: Scammers
Yahoo Yahoo: Someone who cons through e-mail, particularly through a Yahoo! address
- On October 1ST 2011, A team of Nigerian citizens launched an online campaign to show case 419 reasons to love Nigeria, to ensure the country is not associated with the sins of just a few. They put all their entries on this site here http://www.419positive.org/419-reasons-to-like-nigeria-complete-list/
Confidence trick
A confidence trick is an attempt to defraud a person or group by gaining their confidence. A confidence artist is an individual working alone or in concert with others who exploits characteristics of the human psyche such as dishonesty and honesty, vanity, compassion, credulity, irresponsibility,...
in which the target is persuaded to advance sums of money in the hope of realizing a significantly larger gain. Among the variations on this type of scam are the Nigerian Letter (also called the 419 fraud, Nigerian scam, Nigerian bank scam, or Nigerian money offer, or Fifo's Fraud), the Spanish Prisoner
Spanish Prisoner
The Spanish Prisoner is a confidence trick originating in the late 19th century. In its original form, the con-man tells his victim that he is in correspondence with a wealthy person of high estate who has been imprisoned in Spain under a false identity...
, the black money scam
Black money scam
The black money scam, sometimes also known as the "wash wash scam", is a scam where con artists attempt to fraudulently obtain money from a victim by persuading him or her that piles of banknote-sized paper in a trunk or a safe is really money which has been dyed black...
as well as Russian/Ukrainian scam (also widespread, though far less popular than the former). The so-called Russian and Nigerian scams stand for wholly dissimilar organized-crime
Organized crime
Organized crime or criminal organizations are transnational, national, or local groupings of highly centralized enterprises run by criminals for the purpose of engaging in illegal activity, most commonly for monetary profit. Some criminal organizations, such as terrorist organizations, are...
traditions; they therefore tend to use altogether different breeds of approaches.
Although similar to older scams such as the Spanish Prisoner
Spanish Prisoner
The Spanish Prisoner is a confidence trick originating in the late 19th century. In its original form, the con-man tells his victim that he is in correspondence with a wealthy person of high estate who has been imprisoned in Spain under a false identity...
, the modern 419 scam originated in the early 1980s as the oil-based Nigerian economy
Economy of Nigeria
The economy of Nigeria is a middle income, mixed economy emerging market with well-developed financial, legal, communications, transport, and entertainment sectors...
declined. Several unemployed university students first used this scam as a means of manipulating business visitors interested in shady deals in the Nigerian oil sector before targeting businessmen in the west, and later the wider population. Scammers in the early-to-mid 1990s targeted companies, sending scam messages via letter, fax, or Telex. The spread of e-mail and easy access to e-mail-harvesting
E-mail address harvesting
Email harvesting is the process of obtaining lists of email addresses using various methods for use in bulk email or other purposes usually grouped as spam.-Methods:...
software significantly lowered the cost of sending scam letters by using the Internet. In the 2000s, the 419 scam has spurred imitations from other locations in Africa, Philippines
Philippines
The Philippines , officially known as the Republic of the Philippines , is a country in Southeast Asia in the western Pacific Ocean. To its north across the Luzon Strait lies Taiwan. West across the South China Sea sits Vietnam...
, Malaysia, Russia
Russia
Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...
, Australia
Australia
Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...
, Canada
Canada
Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...
, United Kingdom
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
, and the United States.
The number "419" refers to the article of the Nigerian Criminal Code (part of Chapter 38: "Obtaining Property by false pretences; Cheating
Cheating (law)
At law, cheating is a specific criminal offence relating to property.Historically, to cheat was to commit a misdemeanour at common law. However, in most jurisdictions, the offence has now been codified into statute....
") dealing with fraud. The American Dialect Society
American Dialect Society
The American Dialect Society, founded in 1889, is a learned society "dedicated to the study of the English language in North America, and of other languages, or dialects of other languages, influencing it or influenced by it." The Society publishes the academic journal, American Speech...
has traced the term "419 fraud" back to 1992.
The advance-fee fraud is similar to a much older scam known as the Spanish Prisoner
Spanish Prisoner
The Spanish Prisoner is a confidence trick originating in the late 19th century. In its original form, the con-man tells his victim that he is in correspondence with a wealthy person of high estate who has been imprisoned in Spain under a false identity...
scam in which the trickster tells the victim that a rich prisoner promised to share treasure with the victim in exchange for money to bribe prison guards. An older version of this scam existed by the end of 18th century, and is called "the Letter From Jerusalem" by Eugène François Vidocq
Eugène François Vidocq
Eugène François Vidocq was a French criminal and criminalist whose life story inspired several writers, including Victor Hugo and Honoré de Balzac...
, in his memoirs.
Insa Nolte, a lecturer of University of Birmingham
University of Birmingham
The University of Birmingham is a British Redbrick university located in the city of Birmingham, England. It received its royal charter in 1900 as a successor to Birmingham Medical School and Mason Science College . Birmingham was the first Redbrick university to gain a charter and thus...
's African Studies Department, stated that "The availability of e-mail helped to transform a local form of fraud into one of Nigeria's most important export industries."
Embassies and other organizations warn visitors to various countries about 419. Countries in West Africa
West Africa
West Africa or Western Africa is the westernmost region of the African continent. Geopolitically, the UN definition of Western Africa includes the following 16 countries and an area of approximately 5 million square km:-Flags of West Africa:...
with warnings cited include Nigeria
Nigeria
Nigeria , officially the Federal Republic of Nigeria, is a federal constitutional republic comprising 36 states and its Federal Capital Territory, Abuja. The country is located in West Africa and shares land borders with the Republic of Benin in the west, Chad and Cameroon in the east, and Niger in...
, Ghana
Ghana
Ghana , officially the Republic of Ghana, is a country located in West Africa. It is bordered by Côte d'Ivoire to the west, Burkina Faso to the north, Togo to the east, and the Gulf of Guinea to the south...
, Benin
Benin
Benin , officially the Republic of Benin, is a country in West Africa. It borders Togo to the west, Nigeria to the east and Burkina Faso and Niger to the north. Its small southern coastline on the Bight of Benin is where a majority of the population is located...
, Côte d'Ivoire
Côte d'Ivoire
The Republic of Côte d'Ivoire or Ivory Coast is a country in West Africa. It has an area of , and borders the countries Liberia, Guinea, Mali, Burkina Faso and Ghana; its southern boundary is along the Gulf of Guinea. The country's population was 15,366,672 in 1998 and was estimated to be...
(Ivory Coast), Togo
Togo
Togo, officially the Togolese Republic , is a country in West Africa bordered by Ghana to the west, Benin to the east and Burkina Faso to the north. It extends south to the Gulf of Guinea, on which the capital Lomé is located. Togo covers an area of approximately with a population of approximately...
, Senegal
Senegal
Senegal , officially the Republic of Senegal , is a country in western Africa. It owes its name to the Sénégal River that borders it to the east and north...
and Burkina Faso
Burkina Faso
Burkina Faso – also known by its short-form name Burkina – is a landlocked country in west Africa. It is surrounded by six countries: Mali to the north, Niger to the east, Benin to the southeast, Togo and Ghana to the south, and Côte d'Ivoire to the southwest.Its size is with an estimated...
. Countries outside West Africa with 419 warnings cited include South Africa
South Africa
The Republic of South Africa is a country in southern Africa. Located at the southern tip of Africa, it is divided into nine provinces, with of coastline on the Atlantic and Indian oceans...
,
British Bankers' Association
The British Bankers’ Association is the trade association which represents the banks operating within the United Kingdom.-History:It was set up in 1919. In 1972 it accepted foreign banks...
Spain, and the Netherlands
Netherlands
The Netherlands is a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, located mainly in North-West Europe and with several islands in the Caribbean. Mainland Netherlands borders the North Sea to the north and west, Belgium to the south, and Germany to the east, and shares maritime borders...
.
Implementation
This scam usually begins with a letter or e-mail purportedly sent to a selected recipient but actually sent to many, making an offer that would result in a large payoff for the victim. The e-mail's subject line often says something like "From the desk of barristerDictator
A dictator is a ruler who assumes sole and absolute power but without hereditary ascension such as an absolute monarch. When other states call the head of state of a particular state a dictator, that state is called a dictatorship...
who has amassed a stolen fortune, or a bank employee who knows of a terminally ill wealthy person with no relatives or a wealthy foreigner who deposited money in the bank just before dying in a plane crash (leaving no will
Will (law)
A will or testament is a legal declaration by which a person, the testator, names one or more persons to manage his/her estate and provides for the transfer of his/her property at death...
or known next of kin
Next of kin
Next of kin is a term with many interpretations depending on the jurisdiction being referred to. In some jurisdictions, such as the United States, it is used to describe a person's closest living blood relative or relatives...
), a US soldier who has stumbled upon a hidden cache of gold in Iraq, a business being audited by the government, a disgruntled worker or corrupt government official who has embezzled funds, a refugee, and similar characters. The money could be in the form of gold bullion
Gold as an investment
Of all the precious metals, gold is the most popular as an investment. Investors generally buy gold as a hedge or harbor against economic, political, or social fiat currency crises...
, gold dust, money in a bank account, blood diamonds, a series of checks or bank drafts, and so forth. The sums involved are usually in the millions of dollars, and the investor is promised a large share, typically ten to forty percent, if they assist the scam character in retrieving the money. Whilst the vast majority
of recipients do not respond to these e-mails, a very small percentage do, enough to make the fraud worthwhile as many millions of messages can be sent. Invariably sums of money which are substantial, but very much smaller than the promised profits, are said to be required in advance for bribes, fees, etc.—this is the money being stolen from the victim, who thinks he or she is investing to make a huge profit.
Many operations are professionally organized in Nigeria, with offices, working fax
Fax
Fax , sometimes called telecopying, is the telephonic transmission of scanned printed material , normally to a telephone number connected to a printer or other output device...
numbers, and often contacts at government offices. The victim who attempts to research the background of the offer often finds that all pieces fit together. Such scammers can often lure wealthy investors, investment groups, or other business entities into scams resulting in multi-million dollar losses. However, many scammers are part of less organized gangs or are operating independently; such scammers have reduced access to the above connections and thus have little success with wealthier investors or business entities attempting to research them, but are still convincing to middle-class individuals and small businesses, and can bilk hundreds of thousands of dollars from such victims.
If the victim agrees to the deal, the other side often sends one or more false documents bearing official government stamps, and seal
Seal (device)
A seal can be a figure impressed in wax, clay, or some other medium, or embossed on paper, with the purpose of authenticating a document ; but the term can also mean the device for making such impressions, being essentially a mould with the mirror image of the design carved in sunken- relief or...
s. 419 scammers often mention false addresses and use photographs taken from the Internet or from magazines to falsely represent themselves. Often a photograph used by a scammer is not of any person involved in the scheme. Multiple "people" involved in schemes are fictitious; the author of the "West African Advance Fee Scams" article posted on the website of the Embassy of the United States in Abidjan
Abidjan
Abidjan is the economic and former official capital of Côte d'Ivoire, while the current capital is Yamoussoukro. it was the largest city in the nation and the third-largest French-speaking city in the world, after Paris, and Kinshasa but before Montreal...
, Côte d'Ivoire believes that in many cases one person controls many fictitious personas used in scams.
A scammer introduces a delay or monetary hurdle that prevents the deal from occurring as planned, such as "To transmit the money, we need to bribe a bank official. Could you help us with a loan?" or "For you to be a party to the transaction, you must have holdings at a Nigerian bank of $100,000 or more" or similar. More delays and more additional costs are added, always keeping the promise of an imminent large transfer alive, convincing the victim that the money they are currently paying is covered several times over by the payoff. Sometimes psychological pressure is added by claiming that the Nigerian side, to pay certain fees, had to sell belongings and borrow money on their house, or by pointing out the different salary scale and living conditions in Africa, compared to the West. Much of the time, however, the needed psychological pressure is self-applied; once the victims have put money in toward the payoff, they feel they have a vested interest in
seeing the "deal" through. Some victims believe that they can cheat the con artist. This idea is often encouraged by the fraudsters who write in a clumsy and uneducated style which presents them as naive and easily cheated by a sophisticated Westerner.
The essential fact in all advance-fee fraud operations is that the promised money transfer never happens because the money or gold does not exist. The perpetrators rely on the fact that, by the time the victim realizes this (often only after being confronted by a third party who has noticed the transactions or conversation and recognized the scam), the victim may have sent thousands of dollars of their own money, and sometimes thousands or millions more that has been borrowed or stolen, to the scammer via an untraceable and/or irreversible means such as wire transfer
Wire transfer
Wire transfer or credit transfer is a method of electronic funds transfer from one person or institution to another. A wire transfer can be made from one bank account to another bank account or through a transfer of cash at a cash office...
.
In extreme cases the victim may not realize that he or she has been defrauded. A version of the scam is for the thief to claim to have contacts to facilitate legitimate business loans; the victim here is not persuaded that he is doing anything illegal. The fraudster meets the victim, and must be able to act the part of a well-connected and experienced loan broker
Broker
A broker is a party that arranges transactions between a buyer and a seller, and gets a commission when the deal is executed. A broker who also acts as a seller or as a buyer becomes a principal party to the deal...
. He asks for payment in advance, which is normal for large loans. Then the loan gradually falls through in a plausible way, and the victim may end up being defrauded of tens of thousands of dollars or pounds, thinking only that the deal simply failed. These frauds may go unreported, either because the victim does not realize he has been cheated, or due to reluctance to admit the facts. Because of "non-disclosure clauses" which may have been included in the fraudulent contract, reporting of the scam may be delayed until the victim becomes certain he has been cheated.
The spam e-mails perpetrating these scams are often sent from Internet café
Internet cafe
An Internet café or cybercafé is a place which provides internet access to the public, usually for a fee. These businesses usually provide snacks and drinks, hence the café in the name...
s equipped with satellite Internet. Recipient addresses and e-mail content are copied and pasted into a webmail interface using a standalone storage medium, such as a memory card. Many areas of Lagos
Lagos
Lagos is a port and the most populous conurbation in Nigeria. With a population of 7,937,932, it is currently the third most populous city in Africa after Cairo and Kinshasa, and currently estimated to be the second fastest growing city in Africa...
, such as Festac, contain many cyber cafés that serve scammers; many cyber cafés seal their doors during afterhours, such as from 10:30 PM to 7:00 AM, so that scammers inside may work without fear of discovery.
Nigeria also contains many businesses that provide false documents used in scams; after a scam involving a forged signature of Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo in summer 2005, Nigerian authorities raided a market in the Oluwole section of Lagos. The police seized thousands of Nigerian and non-Nigerian passports, 10,000 blank British Airways
British Airways
British Airways is the flag carrier airline of the United Kingdom, based in Waterside, near its main hub at London Heathrow Airport. British Airways is the largest airline in the UK based on fleet size, international flights and international destinations...
boarding passes, 10,000 United States money order
Money order
A money order is a payment order for a pre-specified amount of money. Because it is required that the funds be prepaid for the amount shown on it, it is a more trusted method of payment than a cheque.-History of money orders:...
s, customs documents, false university certificates, 500 printing plates, and 500 computers.
During the courses of many schemes, scammers ask victims to supply bank account information. Usually this is a "test" devised by the scammer to gauge the victim's gullibility
Gullibility
Gullibility is a failure of social intelligence in which a person is easily tricked or manipulated into an ill-advised course of action. It is closely related to credulity, which is the tendency to believe unlikely propositions that are unsupported by evidence....
.
Scammers often request that payments be made using a wire transfer
Wire transfer
Wire transfer or credit transfer is a method of electronic funds transfer from one person or institution to another. A wire transfer can be made from one bank account to another bank account or through a transfer of cash at a cash office...
service like Western Union
Western Union
The Western Union Company is a financial services and communications company based in the United States. Its North American headquarters is in Englewood, Colorado. Up until 2006, Western Union was the best-known U.S...
and Moneygram
MoneyGram
MoneyGram International, Inc. is a US-based, Global Money transfer company, headquartered in Dallas, Texas. It has Global Operations Centers in Saint Louis Park, Minnesota and Brooklyn Center, Minnesota, Global Call Center Operations in Denver, Colorado and regional and local offices around the...
. The reason given by the scammer usually relates to the speed at which the payment can be received and processed, allowing quick release of the supposed payoff. The real reason is that wire transfers and similar methods of payment are irreversible, untraceable and, because identification beyond knowledge of the details of the transaction is often not required, completely anonymous.
Telephone numbers used by scammers tend to come from mobile phone
Mobile phone
A mobile phone is a device which can make and receive telephone calls over a radio link whilst moving around a wide geographic area. It does so by connecting to a cellular network provided by a mobile network operator...
s. In Côte d'Ivoire
Côte d'Ivoire
The Republic of Côte d'Ivoire or Ivory Coast is a country in West Africa. It has an area of , and borders the countries Liberia, Guinea, Mali, Burkina Faso and Ghana; its southern boundary is along the Gulf of Guinea. The country's population was 15,366,672 in 1998 and was estimated to be...
(Ivory Coast) a scammer may purchase an inexpensive mobile phone and a pre-paid SIM card without submitting subscriber information. If the scammers believed they are being traced, they discard their mobile phones and purchase new ones.
In Benin, Nigeria
Nigeria
Nigeria , officially the Federal Republic of Nigeria, is a federal constitutional republic comprising 36 states and its Federal Capital Territory, Abuja. The country is located in West Africa and shares land borders with the Republic of Benin in the west, Chad and Cameroon in the east, and Niger in...
ns operate scams with Beninese cooperating in the schemes.
Some crime syndicates employ fraudsters in the United States who conclude "deals" or threaten victims who try to leave deals.
Fake cheques
Fraudulent cheques and money orders are key elements in many advance-fee scams, such as auction/classified listing overpayment, lottery scams, inheritance scams, etc., and can be used in almost any scam when a "payment" to the victim is required to gain, regain or further solidify the victim's trust and confidence in the validity of the scheme.The use of cheques in a scam hinges on a US law (and common practice in other countries) concerning cheques: when an account holder presents a cheque for deposit or to cash, the bank must (or in other countries, usually) make the funds available to the account holder within 1–5 business days, regardless of how long it actually takes for the cheque to clear and funds to be transferred from the issuing bank. The cheques clearing process normally takes 7–10 days and can in fact take up to a month when dealing with foreign banks. The time between the funds appearing as available to the account holder and the cheque clearing is known as the "float", during which time the bank could technically be said to have floated a loan to the account holder to be covered with the funds from the bank clearing the cheque.
The cheque given to the victim is typically counterfeit but drawn on a real account with real funds in it. With a piece of software like QuickBooks
QuickBooks
QuickBooks is a line of business accounting software developed and marketed by Intuit.-History:Intuit was founded in 1983 by Scott Cook and Tom Proulx in Mountain View, California, USA...
and/or pre-printed blank cheque stock, using the correct banking information, the scammer can easily print a cheque that is absolutely genuine-looking, passes all counterfeit tests, and may even clear the paying account if the account information is accurate and the funds are available. However, whether it clears or not, it eventually becomes apparent either to the bank or the account holder that the cheque is a forgery. This can be as little as three days after the funds are available if the bank supposedly covering the cheque discovers the cheque information is invalid, or it could take months for a business or individual to notice the fraudulent draft on their account. It has been suggested that in some cases the cheque is genuine — however the fraudster has a friend (or bribes an official) at the paying bank to claim it is a fake weeks or even months later when the physical cheque arrives back at the paying bank.
Regardless of the amount of time involved, once the cashing bank is alerted that the cheque is fraudulent, the transaction is reversed and the money removed from the victim's account. In many cases, this puts victims in debt to their banks as the victim has usually sent a large portion of the cheque by some non-reversible 'wire transfer' means (typically Western Union) to the scammer and, since more uncollected funds have been sent than funds otherwise present in the victim's account, an overdraft
Overdraft
An overdraft occurs when money is withdrawn from a bank account and the available balance goes below zero. In this situation the account is said to be "overdrawn". If there is a prior agreement with the account provider for an overdraft, and the amount overdrawn is within the authorized overdraft...
results.
Western Union/MoneyGram Wire Transfers
A central element of advance-fee fraud is that the transaction from the victim to the scammer must be untraceable and irreversible. Otherwise, the victim, once they become aware of the scam, can successfully retrieve their money and/or alert officials who can track the accounts used by the scammer.Wire transfers via Western Union
Western Union
The Western Union Company is a financial services and communications company based in the United States. Its North American headquarters is in Englewood, Colorado. Up until 2006, Western Union was the best-known U.S...
and MoneyGram
MoneyGram
MoneyGram International, Inc. is a US-based, Global Money transfer company, headquartered in Dallas, Texas. It has Global Operations Centers in Saint Louis Park, Minnesota and Brooklyn Center, Minnesota, Global Call Center Operations in Denver, Colorado and regional and local offices around the...
are ideal for this purpose. The wire transfer, if sent internationally, cannot be cancelled or reversed, and the person receiving the money cannot be tracked. Other similar non-cancellable forms of payment include postal money orders and cashier's checks, but as wire transfer via Western Union or MoneyGram is the fastest method, it is the most common.
Anonymous communication
Since the scammer's operations must be untraceable to avoid identification, and because the scammer is often impersonating someone else, any communication between the scammer and his victim must be done through channels that hide the scammer's true identity. The following options in particular are widely used.Bad English
Invariably the emails contain numerous spelling and grammar errors. This is sometimes deliberate and not necessarily the result of sloppiness or a lack of education on the part of the scammers. The bad English lulls the native English speaker or educated reader into a false sense of security. The victim is encouraged to think that he or she is superior to the scammer and even though the victim "knows" the email is a scam will still think he or she can outwit the "stupid" scammer if there is any danger at a later stage.Web-based e-mail
Because many free e-mail services do not require valid identifying information, and also allow communication with many victims in a short span of time, they are the preferred method of communication for scammers. Some services go so far as to mask the sender's source IP address, making the scammer completely untraceable even to country of origin. Scammers can create as many accounts as they wish and often have several at a time. In addition, if e-mail providers are alerted to the scammer's activities and suspend the account, it is a trivial matter for the scammer to simply create a new account to resume scamming.E-mail hijacking/friend scams
Some fraudsters hijack existing e-mail accounts and use them for advance-fee fraud purposes. The fraudsters e-mail associates, friends, and/or family members of the legitimate account owner in an attempt to defraud them. This ruse generally requires the use of phishingPhishing
Phishing is a way of attempting to acquire information such as usernames, passwords, and credit card details by masquerading as a trustworthy entity in an electronic communication. Communications purporting to be from popular social web sites, auction sites, online payment processors or IT...
or keylogger computer viruses to gain login information for the e-mail address.
Fax transmissions
Facsimile machinesFax
Fax , sometimes called telecopying, is the telephonic transmission of scanned printed material , normally to a telephone number connected to a printer or other output device...
are commonly used tools of business, whenever a client requires a hard copy of a document. They can also be simulated using web services, and made untraceable by the use of prepaid phones connected to mobile fax machines or by use of a public fax machine such as one owned by a document processing business like FedEx Office/Kinko's
FedEx Office
FedEx Office is a chain of stores that provide a retail outlet for FedEx Express and FedEx Ground shipping, as well as printing, copying, and binding services...
. Thus, scammers posing as business entities often use fax transmissions as an anonymous form of communication. This is more expensive, as the prepaid phone and fax equipment cost more than e-mail, but to a skeptical victim it can be more believable.
SMS messages
Abusing SMS bulk senders such as WASPSWireless Application Service Provider
A wireless application service provider is the generic name for a firm that provides remote services, typically to handheld devices that connect to wireless data networks such as cellphones or PDAs. WASPs are a specific category of application service providers , though the latter term may more...
, scammers subscribe to these services using fraudulent registration details and paying either via cash or stolen credit card details. They then send out masses of unsolicited SMS'es
SMS
SMS is a form of text messaging communication on phones and mobile phones. The terms SMS or sms may also refer to:- Computer hardware :...
to victims stating they have won a competition/lottery/reward or like event and they have to contact somebody to claim their prize. Typically the details of the party to be contacted will be an equally untraceable email address or a virtual telephone number. These messages may be sent over a weekend when abuse staff at the service providers are not working, enabling the scammer to be able to abuse the services for a whole weekend.Even when traceable they give out long and winding procedure of procuring the reward (real/unreal) and that too with the impending huge cost of transportation and tax/duty charges.The origin of such SMS messages are often from fake websites/addresses.
A recent (mid 2011) innovation is the use of a Premium Rate 'call back' number (instead of a web site or email) in the SMS. On calling the number, the victim is first reassured that 'they are a winner' and then subjected to a long series of instructions on how to collect their 'winnings'. During the message there will be frequent instructions to 'ring back in the event of problems'. Needless to say the call is always 'cut off' just before the victim has the chance note all the details. Some victims call back multiple times in an effort to collect all the details. Needless to say, the scammer makes their money out of the fees charged for call.
Telecommunications relay services
Many scams use telephone calls to convince the victim that the person on the other end of the deal is a real, truthful person. The scammer, possibly impersonating a US citizen or other person of a nationality, or gender, other than their own, would arouse suspicion by telephoning the victim. In these cases, scammers use TRSTelecommunications Relay Service
Telecommunications Relay Service, also known as TRS, Relay Service, or IP-Relay, or Web-based relay services, is an operator service that allows people who are Deaf, Hard-of-Hearing, Speech-Disabled, or DeafBlind to place calls to standard telephone users via a keyboard or assistive device...
, a US federally-funded relay service where an operator or a text/speech translation program acts as an intermediary between someone using an ordinary telephone and a deaf caller using TDD
Telecommunications device for the deaf
A telecommunications device for the deaf is a teleprinter, an electronic device for text communication over a telephone line, that is designed for use by persons with hearing or speech difficulties...
or other teleprinter
Teleprinter
A teleprinter is a electromechanical typewriter that can be used to communicate typed messages from point to point and point to multipoint over a variety of communication channels that range from a simple electrical connection, such as a pair of wires, to the use of radio and microwave as the...
device. The scammer may claim they are deaf, and that they must use a relay service. The victim, possibly drawn in by sympathy for a disabled caller, might be more susceptible to the fraud.
FCC regulations and confidentiality laws require that operators relay calls verbatim, and that they adhere to a strict code of confidentiality and ethics. Thus, no relay operator may judge the legality and/or legitimacy of a relay call, and must relay it without interference. This means the relay operator may not warn victims, even when they suspect the call is a scam. MCI
MCI Inc.
MCI, Inc. is an American telecommunications subsidiary of Verizon Communications that is headquartered in Ashburn, Virginia...
said that about one percent of their IP Relay calls in 2004 were scams.
Tracking phone-based relay services is relatively easy, so scammers tend to prefer Internet Protocol-based relay services such as IP Relay. In a common strategy, they bind their overseas IP address to a router or server located on US soil, allowing them to use US-based relay service providers without interference.
TRS is sometimes used to relay credit card information to make a fraudulent purchase with a stolen credit card. In many cases however, it is simply a means for the con artist to further lure the victim into the scam.
Fake websites
Though 419 scams are often perpetrated by e-mail alone, some scammers enhance believability of their offer by using a sham website. They create these sites to impersonate real commercial sites, such as eBayEBay
eBay Inc. is an American internet consumer-to-consumer corporation that manages eBay.com, an online auction and shopping website in which people and businesses buy and sell a broad variety of goods and services worldwide...
, PayPal
PayPal
PayPal is an American-based global e-commerce business allowing payments and money transfers to be made through the Internet. Online money transfers serve as electronic alternatives to paying with traditional paper methods, such as checks and money orders....
, or a banking site like Bank of America
Bank of America
Bank of America Corporation, an American multinational banking and financial services corporation, is the second largest bank holding company in the United States by assets, and the fourth largest bank in the U.S. by market capitalization. The bank is headquartered in Charlotte, North Carolina...
or Natwest Bank for phishing
Phishing
Phishing is a way of attempting to acquire information such as usernames, passwords, and credit card details by masquerading as a trustworthy entity in an electronic communication. Communications purporting to be from popular social web sites, auction sites, online payment processors or IT...
. Others represent fictional companies or institutions to give the scam credibility.
Though phishing
Phishing
Phishing is a way of attempting to acquire information such as usernames, passwords, and credit card details by masquerading as a trustworthy entity in an electronic communication. Communications purporting to be from popular social web sites, auction sites, online payment processors or IT...
is a secondary interest of most scam operations, as the object of the scammer is to deceive the victim into sending the money through legitimate means, the use of websites for advance-fee fraud is common. For instance, a scammer may create a website for a fictional bank, then give the victim details to login to the site, where the victim sees the money the scammer has promised sitting in the account. The victim believes the scammer and sends the requested advance payments. Fake (or hijacked) websites are the centerpiece of false online storefront scams.
Another twist on scamming is where links are provided to real news sites covering events the scammer says are relevant to the transaction they propose. For instance, a scammer may use news of the death of a prominent government official as a backstory for a scam involving getting millions of dollars of the slain official's money out of the country. These are real websites covering legitimate news, but the scammer is usually not connected in any way with the events reported, and is simply using the story to gain the victim's sympathy.
Invitation to visit the country
Sometimes, victims are invited to a country to meet real or fake government officials. Some victims who do travel are instead held for ransom. Scammers may tell a victim that he or she does not need to get a visaVisa (document)
A visa is a document showing that a person is authorized to enter the territory for which it was issued, subject to permission of an immigration official at the time of actual entry. The authorization may be a document, but more commonly it is a stamp endorsed in the applicant's passport...
or that the scammers will provide the visa. If the victim does this, the scammers have the power to extort money from the victim. Sometimes victims are ransomed or, as in the case of the 29 year old Greek George Makronalli who was lured to South Africa, killed.
Followup scamming
Scammers recognise that their victim who has just been scammed is more likely to fall for scamming attempts than a random person. Often after a scam, the victim is contacted again by the scammer, representing himself as a law enforcement officer. The victim is informed that a group of criminals has been arrested and that they have recovered his money. To get the money back, the victim must pay a fee for processing or insurance purposes. Even after the victim has realised that he has been scammed, this follow up scam can be successful as the scammer represents himself as a totally different party yet knows details about the transactions. The realization that he has lost a large sum of money and the chance he might get it back often leads to the victim transferring even more money to the same scammer.Variants
There are many variations on the most common stories, and also many variations on the way the scam works. The following are notable deviations from the standard Nigerian Letter scam, but still retain the core elements; the victim is deceived by some disproportionately large gain into sending an advance payment, which once made is irrecoverable.Purchasing goods and services
A modern activity is advertising automobiles on websites. They list a (non-existent) high value car with a low price as bait to attract buyers eager to buy quickly. The scammer says "I am not in the country, but if you pay me first, a friend will drive the car around to you". The payment required may be the full price, or a deposit, but it would not be an insignificant fee. The victim never sees the car, as it does not exist. The scammers use e-mail only, as they know that the sound of their voice and their attitude will give them away as being high risk.Another scheme involves advertising fake academic conferences and enticing academics to apply to present papers. It is a common practice that the conference subsidizes or pays for the air travel of academics who present papers at the conference, but does not pay for accommodation. One way the scammer baits the hopeful attendee is they offer free air travel to the victim, but only as long as they pre-pay for hotel accommodation. The scammer can give a variety of reasons that the accommodation must be pre-paid — primarily that they don't trust the victim will attend the conference unless he pays upfront.
Any goods or services may be used in the scam, but the idea is that the scammer baits the victim with a good deal, but the victim must pay upfront and electronically.
Vehicle Matching Service Scams
The scammer will typically browse large vehicle trading websites and call sellers who have recently advertised their vehicles for sale. They will claim to be calling from a "vehicle matching" company, always claiming that they have several interested buyers waiting to purchase their car, and can put the buyers in touch for a small upfront fee, with the promise that the fee will be returned in full if the vehicle does not sell. In reality however, there are usually no buyers, and the payments are never returned.Check cashing
Some schemes are based solely on conning the victim into cashing a counterfeit check. The scammer contacts the victim to interest them in a "work-at-home" opportunity, or asks them to cash a check or money order that for some reason cannot be redeemed locally. A recently-used cover story is that the perpetrator of the scam wishes the victim to work as a "mystery shopper", evaluating the service provided by MoneyGram or Western Union locations within major retailers such as Wal-MartWal-Mart
Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. , branded as Walmart since 2008 and Wal-Mart before then, is an American public multinational corporation that runs chains of large discount department stores and warehouse stores. The company is the world's 18th largest public corporation, according to the Forbes Global 2000...
. The scammer sends the victim a check or money order, the victim cashes it, sends the cash to the scammer via wire transfer, and the scammer disappears. Later the forgery is discovered and the bank transaction is reversed, leaving the victim liable for the balance. Schemes based solely on check cashing usually offer only a small part of the check's total amount, with the assurance that many more checks
will follow; if the victim buys in to the scam and cashes all the checks, the scammer can win big in a very short period of time. Other scams such as overpayment usually result in smaller revenues for the scammer, but have a higher success rate as the scammer's request seems more believable.
Some check-cashing scammers use multiple victims at multiple stages of the scam. A victim in the US or other "safe" country such as the UK or Canada (often the country in which the cashing victim resides) is sometimes approached with an offer to fill out checks sent to them by the scammer and mail them to other victims who cash the check and wire the money to the scammer. The check mailer is usually promised a cut of the money from the scammer; this usually never occurs, and in fact the check mailer is often conned into paying for the production and shipping costs of the checks. The check information has either been stolen or fictionalized and the checks forged. The victim mailing the check is usually far easier to track (and prosecute) than the scammer, so when the checks turn up as fraudulent, the one mailing them usually ends up not only facing federal bank fraud and conspiracy charges, but liability for the full amount of the fraudulent checks. Because the check mailer is taking the
fall, the scammer is even less likely to be caught, which makes it a popular variation of the scam for scammers in nations with tougher anti-fraud laws.
A variation of the check-cashing scheme involves owners of vacation rentals. The scammer expresses interest in renting the unit for a much higher than normal rate, usually for an upcoming honeymoon, business trip, etc. The scammer also offers to pay all fees "up front," as soon as the unsuspecting unit owner agrees to the windfall rental. Eventually a very official looking money order/cashier's check arrives. About this time the scammer requests that a portion of the rental fee be returned for some compelling reason...wedding called off, death in the family, business failure, etc. Due to the supposed crises, it is requested that most of the rental fee be returned via wire transfer. The unit owner is encouraged to retain "a fair amount" to compensate him for his time. The wire transfer is sent, only to find out later that the official looking check was indeed fake and the entire amount is charged back to the unit owner by his bank.
Romance angle
A recent variant is the Romance Scam, which is a money-for-romance angle. The con artist approaches the victim on an online dating serviceOnline dating service
Online dating or Internet dating is a dating system which allows individuals, couples and groups to make contact and communicate with each other over the Internet, usually with the objective of developing a personal, romantic, or sexual relationship...
, an Instant messenger, or a social networking site. The scammer claims an interest in the victim, and posts pictures of an attractive person (not themselves). The scammer uses this communication to gain confidence, then asks for money. The con artist may claim to be interested in meeting the victim, but needs cash to book a plane, hotel room, or other expenses. In other cases, they claim they're trapped in a foreign country and need assistance to return, to escape imprisonment by corrupt local officials, to pay for medical expenses due to an illness contracted abroad, and so on. The scammer may also use the confidence gained by the romance angle to introduce some variant of the original Nigerian Letter scheme, such as saying they need to get money or valuables out of the country and offer to share the wealth, making the request for help in leaving the country even more attractive to the victim.
In a newer version of the scam, the con artist claims to have 'information' about the fidelity of a person's significant other, which they will share for a fee. This information is garnered through social networking sites by using search parameters such as 'In a relationship' or 'Married'. Anonymous e-mails are first sent to attempt to verify receipt, then a new web based e-mail account is sent along with directions on how to retrieve the information. A scam from Malaysia involves a woman alleging to be half American half Asian with a Father who is American but has passed away. After communication begins the target is immediately asked for money to pay for her sick mother's hospital bills. Also requests are made to help her get back to America. In every case these scammers never have a webcam so you can't verify that they are the one truly in the picture they have sent, and offers to send a camera to them by postal mail (instead of money to buy it) are met with hostility. Domestic scams involve meeting someone on an online match making service. The scammer initiates contact with their target who is out of the area and requests money for bus fare. The scam can get very elaborate and the scammer is very convincing. They don't have a webcam and have excuses for why they do not give address and telephone number. One "woman" scamming had money sent to a generic name like Joseph Hancock alleging she could not collect the money due to losing her international passport. After sending the money the victim is given bad news that they were robbed on the way to the bus stop by two men and the victim feels compelled to send more money. The person never visits their victim and is willing to chat with their victim through a chat client as long as their victim is foolish enough to believe the scam and send more money.
Lottery scam
The lottery scam involves fake notices of lottery wins. The winner is usually asked to send sensitive information such as name, residential address, occupation/position, lottery number etc. to a free e-mail account which is at times untraceable or without any link. The scammer then notifies the victim that releasing the funds requires some small fee (insurance, registration, or shipping). Once the victim sends the fee, the scammer invents another fee.Much like the various forms of overpayment fraud detailed above, a new variant of the lottery scam involves fake or stolen checks being sent to the 'winner' of the lottery (these checks representing a part payment of the winnings). The winner is more likely to assume the win is legitimate, and thus more likely to send the fee (which he does not realize is an advance fee). The check and associated funds are flagged by the bank when the fraud is discovered, and debited from the victim's account.
In 2004 a variant of the lottery scam appeared in the United States. Fraud artists using the scheme call victims on telephones; a scammer tells a victim that a government has given them a grant and that they must pay an advance fee, usually around $250, to receive the grant.
Charity scams
The scammer poses as a charitable organizationCharitable organization
A charitable organization is a type of non-profit organization . It differs from other types of NPOs in that it centers on philanthropic goals A charitable organization is a type of non-profit organization (NPO). It differs from other types of NPOs in that it centers on philanthropic goals A...
soliciting donations to help the victims of a natural disaster, terrorist attack (such as the Sept. 11 World Trade Center
World Trade Center
The original World Trade Center was a complex with seven buildings featuring landmark twin towers in Lower Manhattan, New York City, United States. The complex opened on April 4, 1973, and was destroyed in 2001 during the September 11 attacks. The site is currently being rebuilt with five new...
attack), regional conflict, or epidemic
Epidemic
In epidemiology, an epidemic , occurs when new cases of a certain disease, in a given human population, and during a given period, substantially exceed what is expected based on recent experience...
. Hurricane Katrina
Hurricane Katrina
Hurricane Katrina of the 2005 Atlantic hurricane season was a powerful Atlantic hurricane. It is the costliest natural disaster, as well as one of the five deadliest hurricanes, in the history of the United States. Among recorded Atlantic hurricanes, it was the sixth strongest overall...
and the 2004 tsunami
2004 Indian Ocean earthquake
The 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake was an undersea megathrust earthquake that occurred at 00:58:53 UTC on Sunday, December 26, 2004, with an epicentre off the west coast of Sumatra, Indonesia. The quake itself is known by the scientific community as the Sumatra-Andaman earthquake...
were popular targets of scammers perpetrating charity scams; other more timeless scam charities purport to be raising money for cancer, AIDS
AIDS
Acquired immune deficiency syndrome or acquired immunodeficiency syndrome is a disease of the human immune system caused by the human immunodeficiency virus...
or Ebola virus
Ebola virus
Ebola virus causes severe disease in humans and in nonhuman primates in the form of viral hemorrhagic fever. EBOV is a Select Agent, World Health Organization Risk Group 4 Pathogen , National Institutes of Health/National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Category A Priority Pathogen,...
research, children's orphanages (the scammer pretends to work for the orphanage or a non-profit associated with it), or impersonates charities such as the Red Cross or United Way. The scammer asks for donations, often linking to online news articles to strengthen their story of a funds drive. The scammer's victims are charitable people who believe they are helping a worthy cause and expect nothing in return. Once sent, the money is gone and the scammer often disappears, though many attempt to keep the scam going by asking for a series of payments. The victim may sometimes find themselves in legal trouble after deducting their supposed donations from their income taxes. United States tax law
Tax law
Tax law is the codified system of laws that describes government levies on economic transactions, commonly called taxes.-Major issues:Primary taxation issues facing the governments world over include;* taxes on income and wealth...
states that charitable donations are only deductible if made to a qualified non-profit organization. The scammer may tell the victim their donation is deductible and provide all necessary proof of donation, but the information provided by the scammer is fictional, and if audited, the victim faces stiff penalties as a result of the fraud. Though these scams have some of the highest success rates especially following a major disaster, and are employed by scammers all over the world, the average loss per victim is less than other fraud schemes. This is because, unlike scams involving a large expected payoff, the victim is far less likely to borrow money to donate or donate more than they can spare.
In a related variant, the scammer poses as a terminally ill mother, poor university
University
A university is an institution of higher education and research, which grants academic degrees in a variety of subjects. A university is an organisation that provides both undergraduate education and postgraduate education...
student, or other down-on-their-luck person and simply begs the victim for money for college tuition, to sponsor their children, or a similar ruse. The money, they say, will be repaid plus interest by some third party at a later date (often these third parties are some fictitious agency of the Nigerian government, or the scammer themselves once a payment from someone else is made available to them). Once the victim starts paying money to the scammer, the scammer tells the victim that additional money is needed for unforeseen expenses, similar to most other variants; in the case of the ill mother, the children will fall ill as well and require money for a doctor's care and medicine (many scammers go as far as to say that as the sponsor of the children, the victim is legally liable for such costs), where the student might claim that a dormitory fire destroyed everything they own.
Fraud recovery scams
This variant targets former victims of scams. The scammer contacts the victim saying that their organization can track and apprehend the scammer and recover the money lost by the victim, for a price. Alternatively, the scammer may say that a fund has been set up by the Nigerian government to compensate victims of 419 fraud, and all that is required is proof of loss (which usually includes personal information) and a processing and handling fee to release the amount of the claim. The scammer is counting on the victim's dire need to recover their lost money, as well as the fact that they have fallen victim before and are therefore susceptible to such scams. Often, these scams are perpetrated by the same scammer who conned the victim in the first place, as an attempt to ensure the scammer gets every penny possible from the victim. Alternatively, the original scammer "sells" a list of the people he has scammed but who have ceased contact to another scammer who runs the recovery scam. Sometimes the scammerimpersonates the foremost "fraud related crime-fighters" in Nigeria, the EFCC (Economic and Financial Crimes Commission
Economic and Financial Crimes Commission
The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission is a Nigerian law enforcement agency that investigates financial crimes such as advance fee fraud and money laundering...
), which not only adds credibility to the scam, but tarnishes the reputation of the EFCC once this second scam is discovered.
Babysitting and Au-Pair scams
Another variation of the advance payment type of scam involves recruiting unsuspecting individuals for non-existent babysitting, nanny, or au-pair employment. In one variation a prospective employee may be given an "advance" on wages; in another the victim may be asked to verify pricing and ultimately purchase items for the scammer's non-existent child. Victims are often asked to submit résumés and references and jump through other hoops, cementing in the victim's mind that the employer must be legitimate and the high wages offered are real. Focusing the victim's thinking on proving their worthiness for employment consideration serves to distract the victim from considering whether the offer itself is worthy of replying to.Pet scams
Another such scam is based on the adoption of a puppy or an exotic pet such as parrots or reptiles. A scammer first posts an advertisement or sets up a web page offering puppies for adoption or for sale at a ridiculously low price, most often using stolen pictures from other websites and respectable breeders. When a victim responds to the ad and questions the lowered price or the reason for giving up such an expensive pet, the scammer first explains that they have recently moved to Nigeria or Cameroon from the US for work (usually volunteer work as missionaries or a UN transfer) or for studies, and claims either to have no time to properly care for the pet, that the weather has had such a terrible toll on the pet, or that they have too many pets to care for- often asking for follow-up holiday photos of the pet and a continued line of communication so that the victim does not suspect a scam.The scammer and victim exchange a few e-mails to build trust. They may even send (fake or stolen) photo IDs to further prove their credibility. Once it is established that the victim offers the right home for the pet, the scammer offers to ship the pet, and requests the victim only pay for shipping, or comes off the original price substantially to seem legitimate. The victim, who now has an emotional attachment to the pet, feels obligated and even happy to do so, as shipping is a small price to pay compared to the pet's full price at a shop or breeder. The scammer requests Western Union or MoneyGram (untraceable and irreversible) to keep the deal going in a timely fashion as the pet is ready to go to a new home and the victim is now excited. However, after wiring money, the victim does not receive the pet (as it does not exist), and if the victim does hear from the scammer again it is only for more money (to get animal out of airport holding/quarantine, "refundable" life-insurance fees or to pay unexpected vet bills that have come up) until the victim stops responding. This is extremely common currently in Nigeria and Cameroon.
Another type of scam that is beginning to appear is the selling of a pet by the victim. The scammer typically contacts the victim by a newspaper ad or through an online service with the aid of a call-relay service. After this call has been made, communication is done through email. As mentioned above, trust is built between the scammer and the victim by emails. The structure of the scam is that the seller of the animal (victim) will have the asking price of the animal plus the shipping price sent to him/her through a fake check. The victim will then deposit the check then wire the funds to the scammer through a Western Credit Union location. The "shipper" is often non-existent and described as being "private". Once the money has been wired, the scammer wins.
Craigslist
The popular online classifieds website, CraigslistCraigslist
Craigslist is a centralized network of online communities featuring free online classified advertisements, with sections devoted to jobs, housing, personals, for sale, services, community, gigs, résumés, and discussion forums....
, has been plagued with scammers using advance-fee fraud and similar techniques, usually involving fake checks, to con people out of their money. Sometimes many scammers contact a person who is either attempting to buy or sell items on Craigslist, and attempt to perpetrate exactly the same scam. Many of the same elements as the Nigerian 419 scams are used often on Craigslist, including persons conducting transactions from outside the country, sending realistic looking bank checks, sending more money than is owed, and requesting that money be wired back to the scammer.
Another advance-fee method that has been used recently on Craigslist is where the scammer will contact someone selling an item and ask them to ship the item to a location outside the US, then provide the tracking number for the shipped item in exchange for payment. The seller then sends the item and provides the tracking number, after which the scammer never provides payment. Sometimes the scammer will approach someone offering a room or apartment for rent and pose as someone moving in to their area from overseas. They will create a scenario in which they are pressured to secure the room in advance, and ask if they can secure their occupancy with a deposit. The deposit check that they send will be a fake check for far more than the amount requested for a deposit. When the check arrives, the scammer will ask for a refund of the difference between the check they sent and the agreed upon amount. The fake check will bounce and the victim has lost whatever money they "refunded" to the scammer.
A similar scam exists on the rental model, particularly in the United Kingdom
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
- the scammer posts an ad on a classifieds site such as Craigslist or Gumtree
Gumtree
Gumtree is an extensive network of online classifieds and community websites. Classified ads are either free or paid for depending on the product category and the geographical market...
for an apartment or house for rent (and the rent is far below the normal market rate) with a fantastic description and pictures taken from other adverts or other websites. The victim contacts the scammer in order to secure a viewing, but is told that in order to do so they must go to a Western Union outlet, do a money transfer to a relative for the amount of the deposit and then provide a scanned receipt. Ostensibly this is to prove that the victim can afford the deposit before they view the apartment, and they'll get the money back after the viewing. But in actuality the property may or may not actually exist, and the receipt allows the scammer to collect the funds without any viewing ever taking place.
Alternatively, the scammer forwards a rental application, or asks for information typically given on a rental application, such as driver's license number, bank account information, Social Security Number, etc.
Bona vacantia
In the United Kingdom, bona vacantiaBona vacantia
Bona vacantia is a legal concept associated with property that has no owner. It exists in various jurisdictions, with consequently varying application, but with origins mostly in English law.-Canada:...
is ownerless property which has passed to the Crown
The Crown
The Crown is a corporation sole that in the Commonwealth realms and any provincial or state sub-divisions thereof represents the legal embodiment of governance, whether executive, legislative, or judicial...
. In England and Wales
England and Wales
England and Wales is a jurisdiction within the United Kingdom. It consists of England and Wales, two of the four countries of the United Kingdom...
(other than the Duchy of Lancaster
Duchy of Lancaster
The Duchy of Lancaster is one of the two royal duchies in England, the other being the Duchy of Cornwall. It is held in trust for the Sovereign, and is used to provide income for the use of the British monarch...
and the Duchy of Cornwall
Duchy of Cornwall
The Duchy of Cornwall is one of two royal duchies in England, the other being the Duchy of Lancaster. The eldest son of the reigning British monarch inherits the duchy and title of Duke of Cornwall at the time of his birth, or of his parent's succession to the throne. If the monarch has no son, the...
) this property is administered by the Bona Vacantia Division of the Treasury Solicitor's Department. Fraudulent emails and letters, claiming to be from this department, have been reported which inform the recipient that they are the beneficiary of a legacy but requiring payment of a fee before sending more information
Advance fee fraud
An advance-fee fraud is a confidence trick in which the target is persuaded to advance sums of money in the hope of realizing a significantly larger gain...
or releasing the money.
Fake job offer
A new scam targets people who have posted their resumes on job sites. The scammer sends a letter with a falsified company logo. The job offer usually indicates exceptional salary and benefits and requests that the victim needs a "work permit" for working in the country and includes the address of a (fake) "government official" to contact. The "government official" then proceeds to fleece the victim by extracting fees from the unsuspecting user for the work permit and other fees. A variant of the job scam recruits freelancers seeking legitimate gigs (such as in editing or translation), then offers "pre-payment" for their work.Many legitimate (or at least fully registered) companies work on a similar basis, using this method as their primary source of earnings. Some modelling and escort agencies will tell applicants that they have a number of clients lined up, but that they require a "registration fee" of sorts to account for processing and marketing expenses, or so it is claimed, which is paid in a number of untraceable methods, most often by cash; once the fee is paid, the applicant is informed that the client has cancelled, and thereafter they never contact the applicant again.
Rental scams
A foreign student, doctor, etc. contacts a landlord seeking accommodation. Once the terms are negotiated, a forged check is forwarded for a greater amount than negotiated. Then some emergency comes up where some part of the amount is requested to be urgently wired back. The reverse may also happen, where a scammer posts an accommodation, and requests monies be wired as deposit. The victim arrives to discover they have no accommodation.Attorney Collection Scams
Attorneys that do collections often practice based on contingency. The attorney is contacted by a scammer posing as a representative of a large international firm headquartered in another country. The scammer states that the company has no legal representation in the attorney's state, and needs to collect a debt from a company in that state. Scammer requests attorney email standard retainer agreement. This is commonly done, so attorney emails agreement, scammer signs and returns, and informs attorney that because legal representation has been obtained, the debtor has agreed to pay the debt by the end of the month. Red flag #1 is when the scammer requests attorney not contact the debtor company because the client wishes to maintain a working relationship with the debtor, saving litigation as a last resort. The attorney is instructed to contact the debtor only if the promised payment isn't made on the promised date. On the promised date, the huge check is delivered to the attorney, who deposits in the law firm trust account, keeps the attorney's contingency fee, and sends the rest to the scammer. Red flag #2 is that the scammer will request the money be wired to a foreign country, or insists on quick remittance. Sophisticated scammers will file articles of organization with both states, build web sites, and purchase prepaid cell phones with local phone numbers with scammers posing as both client and debtor. All of that can be done cheaply and easily on the internet. Similar scams involving "back child support" or other interpersonal debts have also been reported.Monetary loss estimates
Estimates of the total losses due to the scam vary widely. Although the "success rate" of the scam is hard to gauge, some experienced 419 scammers get one or two interested replies for every thousand messages. Stephanie Nolen of The Globe and MailThe Globe and Mail
The Globe and Mail is a nationally distributed Canadian newspaper, based in Toronto and printed in six cities across the country. With a weekly readership of approximately 1 million, it is Canada's largest-circulation national newspaper and second-largest daily newspaper after the Toronto Star...
said that an experienced scammer can expect to make at least several thousand dollars per successful scam letter.
Since 1995, the United States Secret Service
United States Secret Service
The United States Secret Service is a United States federal law enforcement agency that is part of the United States Department of Homeland Security. The sworn members are divided among the Special Agents and the Uniformed Division. Until March 1, 2003, the Service was part of the United States...
has been involved in combating these schemes. The organization does not investigate unless the monetary loss is in excess of 50,000 US Dollars
United States dollar
The United States dollar , also referred to as the American dollar, is the official currency of the United States of America. It is divided into 100 smaller units called cents or pennies....
. However, very few arrests and prosecutions have been made due to the international aspect of this crime.
In 2006, a report by a research group concluded that Internet scams in which criminals use information they trick from gullible victims and commonly strip their bank accounts cost the United Kingdom
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
economy £150 million per year, with the average victim losing £31,000.
Between May 1992 and July 1994, a San Diego-based businessman, James Adler, was swindled out of $5.2 million by a Nigeria-based advance fee scam. In 2000, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit affirmed the trial court's findings that (1) various Nigerian government officials (including a governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria
Central Bank of Nigeria
The Central Bank of Nigeria was established by the CBN Act of 1958 and commenced operations on July 1, 1959.The major regulatory objectives of the bank as stated in the CBN act of 1958 is to: issue legal tender, maintain the external reserves of the country, promote monetary stability and a sound...
) had been directly or indirectly involved; (2) the Nigerian government officials could be sued in U.S. courts under the "commercial activity" exception to the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act
Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act
The Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act of 1976 is a United States law, codified at Title 28, §§ 1330, 1332, 1391, 1441, and 1602-1611 of the United States Code, that establishes the limitations as to whether a foreign sovereign nation may be sued in U.S. courts—federal or state...
; and (3) Adler's case was completely barred by the doctrine of unclean hands
Unclean hands
Unclean hands, sometimes called the clean hands doctrine or the dirty hands doctrine, is an equitable defense in which the defendant argues that the plaintiff is not entitled to obtain an equitable remedy on account of the fact that the plaintiff is acting unethically or has acted in bad faith with...
because he had knowingly entered into a contract with the criminal purpose of helping Nigerian officials embezzle funds from their own government.
Nelson Sakaguchi, a director at the Brazilian bank Banco Noroeste, transferred hundreds of millions of U.S. dollars to Chief Emmanuel Nwude, Nigeria's most accomplished scammer. The scam led to at least two murders, including that of one of the scammers, Mr. Bless Okereke. The scam was the third biggest in banking history, after Nick Leeson
Nick Leeson
Nicholas "Nick" Leeson is a former derivatives broker whose fraudulent, unauthorized speculative trading caused the collapse of Barings Bank, the United Kingdom's oldest investment bank, for which he was sent to prison...
's activities at Barings Bank
Barings Bank
Barings Bank was the oldest merchant bank in London until its collapse in 1995 after one of the bank's employees, Nick Leeson, lost £827 million due to speculative investing, primarily in futures contracts, at the bank's Singapore office.-History:-1762–1890:Barings Bank was founded in 1762 as the...
, and the looting of the Iraqi Central Bank during the buildup to the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.
In 2008, an Oregon woman, Janella Spears, lost $400,000 to a Nigerian advance-fee fraud scam, after an e-mail told her she had inherited money from her long-lost grandfather. Her curiosity was piqued because she actually had a grandfather whom her family had lost touch with, and whose initials matched those given in the e-mail. Spears sent hundreds of thousands of dollars over a period of more than two years, despite her family, bank staff and law enforcement officials all urging her to stop.
Physical harm or death
- Some victims have hired private investigatorPrivate investigatorA private investigator , private detective or inquiry agent, is a person who can be hired by individuals or groups to undertake investigatory law services. Private detectives/investigators often work for attorneys in civil cases. Many work for insurance companies to investigate suspicious claims...
s in Nigeria or have personally travelled to Nigeria, without ever retrieving their money. There are cases of victims being unable to cope with the losses and committing suicideSuicideSuicide is the act of intentionally causing one's own death. Suicide is often committed out of despair or attributed to some underlying mental disorder, such as depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, alcoholism, or drug abuse...
. In November 2003, Leslie Fountain, a senior technician at Anglia Polytechnic University in England, set himself on fire after falling victim to a scam; Mr. Fountain died of his injuries. In 2006 an American living in South AfricaSouth AfricaThe Republic of South Africa is a country in southern Africa. Located at the southern tip of Africa, it is divided into nine provinces, with of coastline on the Atlantic and Indian oceans...
hanged himself in TogoTogoTogo, officially the Togolese Republic , is a country in West Africa bordered by Ghana to the west, Benin to the east and Burkina Faso to the north. It extends south to the Gulf of Guinea, on which the capital Lomé is located. Togo covers an area of approximately with a population of approximately...
after being defrauded by a GhanaGhanaGhana , officially the Republic of Ghana, is a country located in West Africa. It is bordered by Côte d'Ivoire to the west, Burkina Faso to the north, Togo to the east, and the Gulf of Guinea to the south...
ian 419 con man. In 2007, a Chinese student at the University of NottinghamUniversity of NottinghamThe University of Nottingham is a public research university based in Nottingham, United Kingdom, with further campuses in Ningbo, China and Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia...
killed herself after she discovered that she fell for a lottery scam. - In February 2003, Jiří Pasovský, a 72 year-old scam victim from the Czech RepublicCzech RepublicThe Czech Republic is a landlocked country in Central Europe. The country is bordered by Poland to the northeast, Slovakia to the east, Austria to the south, and Germany to the west and northwest....
, shot and killed 50-year old Michael Lekara Wayid, an official at the Nigerian embassy in PraguePraguePrague is the capital and largest city of the Czech Republic. Situated in the north-west of the country on the Vltava river, the city is home to about 1.3 million people, while its metropolitan area is estimated to have a population of over 2.3 million...
, and injured another person, after the Nigerian Consul General explained he could not return $600,000 that Pasovský had lost to a Nigerian scammer.
Kidnapping
- Osamai Hitomi, a Japanese businessman was lured to JohannesburgJohannesburgJohannesburg also known as Jozi, Jo'burg or Egoli, is the largest city in South Africa, by population. Johannesburg is the provincial capital of Gauteng, the wealthiest province in South Africa, having the largest economy of any metropolitan region in Sub-Saharan Africa...
, South AfricaSouth AfricaThe Republic of South Africa is a country in southern Africa. Located at the southern tip of Africa, it is divided into nine provinces, with of coastline on the Atlantic and Indian oceans...
in a 419 scam and kidnapped on 26 September 2008. The kidnappers took him to Alberton, south of Johannesburg and demanded a $5 million ransom from his family. Seven people were arrested. - On 23 September 2008, Kenth Sadaaki Suzuki, a SwedishSwedenSweden , officially the Kingdom of Sweden , is a Nordic country on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. Sweden borders with Norway and Finland and is connected to Denmark by a bridge-tunnel across the Öresund....
businessman, was lured to South Africa and kidnapped. He was taken to a house in Rosettenville in Johannesburg and robbed of all his belongings. Thereafter a ransom of €20,000 was demanded from his family. Two people were arrested. They are also linked to the kidnappings of three AmericanUnited StatesThe United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
citizens and possibly other similar cases. - On 2 June 1996 in LoméLoméLomé, with an estimated population of 737,751, is the capital and largest city of Togo. Located on the Gulf of Guinea, Lomé is the country's administrative and industrial center and its chief port. The city exports coffee, cocoa, copra, and palm kernels...
, TogoTogoTogo, officially the Togolese Republic , is a country in West Africa bordered by Ghana to the west, Benin to the east and Burkina Faso to the north. It extends south to the Gulf of Guinea, on which the capital Lomé is located. Togo covers an area of approximately with a population of approximately...
, 419ing kidnappers held a SwedishSwedenSweden , officially the Kingdom of Sweden , is a Nordic country on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. Sweden borders with Norway and Finland and is connected to Denmark by a bridge-tunnel across the Öresund....
businessman for $500,000. Swedish police and the kidnappers negotiated before the kidnappers released the man on 12 June 1996. - From September 1995 to April 1997, conmen in Nigeria held at least eight Americans against their will. In 1996 the U.S. embassy helped repatriate ten Americans who fell victim to 419 schemes.
- Joseph Raca, a former mayor of Northampton, England, was kidnapped by scammers in JohannesburgJohannesburgJohannesburg also known as Jozi, Jo'burg or Egoli, is the largest city in South Africa, by population. Johannesburg is the provincial capital of Gauteng, the wealthiest province in South Africa, having the largest economy of any metropolitan region in Sub-Saharan Africa...
, South Africa in July 2001. The captors released Raca after they became nervous. - Dănuţ Tetrescu, a RomaniaRomaniaRomania is a country located at the crossroads of Central and Southeastern Europe, on the Lower Danube, within and outside the Carpathian arch, bordering on the Black Sea...
n who flew from BucharestBucharestBucharest is the capital municipality, cultural, industrial, and financial centre of Romania. It is the largest city in Romania, located in the southeast of the country, at , and lies on the banks of the Dâmbovița River....
to Johannesburg to meet with con men in the SowetoSowetoSoweto is a lower-class-populated urban area of the city of Johannesburg in Gauteng, South Africa, bordering the city's mining belt in the south. Its name is an English syllabic abbreviation for South Western Townships...
area of Johannesburg, was kidnapped in 1999 and held for $500,000.
Murder
- 29-year old George Makronalli, a Greek man, was murdered in South Africa in December 2004 after his family refused to pay a ransom.
- Kjetil Moe, a Norwegian businessman, was reported missing and ultimately killed after a trade with Nigerian scammers in Johannesburg, South Africa (September 1999).
- On May 20, 1995, the U.S. Embassy in Lagos stated that James Breaux, an American who resided in Switzerland, was murdered in Nigeria and found dead in Sulere, LagosLagosLagos is a port and the most populous conurbation in Nigeria. With a population of 7,937,932, it is currently the third most populous city in Africa after Cairo and Kinshasa, and currently estimated to be the second fastest growing city in Africa...
. - One American was murdered in Nigeria in June 1995 after being lured by a 419 scam.
- From 1994 to April 1997, 419 scammers murdered 15 people in total.
Emotional harm
Victims, in addition to having lost large sums of money, often also lose their ability to trust. The 419 Eater website419eater.com
419eater.com is a scam baiting website which focuses on advance-fee fraud. The name 419 comes from "419 fraud", another name for advance fee fraud, and itself derived from the relevant section of the Nigerian criminal code. The website founder, Michael Berry, goes by the alias Shiver Metimbers...
says, "Although there is no serious physical injury, many victims of con-men speak of the betrayal as the psychological equivalent of rape". Victims may blame themselves for what has happened, resulting in overwhelming guilt and shame. If the victim has borrowed money from others to pay the scammer, these feelings are magnified. Further compounding the problem is the public opinion of scam letters and scam victims. Scam letters are often viewed as humorously moronic, and the people who fall for them equally so. The victim, having lost money through the scammer's manipulation of payment methods such as money orders or checks, may become distrustful of the financial system. Scam victims may stop trusting and giving money to churches, legitimate charities and, in the extreme, even service providers such as their electric company because of their requests for money. Some victims commit suicide
Suicide
Suicide is the act of intentionally causing one's own death. Suicide is often committed out of despair or attributed to some underlying mental disorder, such as depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, alcoholism, or drug abuse...
.
In other cases, the victim continues to contact the scammer after being shown proof that they are being scammed or even being convicted of crimes relating to the scam, having been drawn so deeply into the web of deception that their trust in what the scammer tells them overrides everything else in their life. Such victims are easy prey for future scams, digging themselves even deeper into financial and legal trouble.
Arrests
In 2004, fifty-two suspects were arrested in AmsterdamAmsterdam
Amsterdam is the largest city and the capital of the Netherlands. The current position of Amsterdam as capital city of the Kingdom of the Netherlands is governed by the constitution of August 24, 1815 and its successors. Amsterdam has a population of 783,364 within city limits, an urban population...
after an extensive raid. An Internet service provider
Internet service provider
An Internet service provider is a company that provides access to the Internet. Access ISPs directly connect customers to the Internet using copper wires, wireless or fiber-optic connections. Hosting ISPs lease server space for smaller businesses and host other people servers...
noticed the increased e-mail traffic. None were jailed or fined, due to lack of evidence. They were released in the week of 12 July 2004.
On 8 November 2004, Nick Marinellis of Sydney, Australia, was sentenced to to years for sending Nigerian 419 e-mails.
In October 2006 the Amsterdam
Amsterdam
Amsterdam is the largest city and the capital of the Netherlands. The current position of Amsterdam as capital city of the Kingdom of the Netherlands is governed by the constitution of August 24, 1815 and its successors. Amsterdam has a population of 783,364 within city limits, an urban population...
police launched Operation Apollo to fight Internet fraud scams operated by West Africans and notably Nigerians. Following this investigation police have arrested eighty suspects, most of them from Nigeria
Nigeria
Nigeria , officially the Federal Republic of Nigeria, is a federal constitutional republic comprising 36 states and its Federal Capital Territory, Abuja. The country is located in West Africa and shares land borders with the Republic of Benin in the west, Chad and Cameroon in the east, and Niger in...
, and seized from their homes lists of e-mail addresses, as well as fake documents. On 16 June 2007, 111 people were arrested for being in the Netherlands
Netherlands
The Netherlands is a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, located mainly in North-West Europe and with several islands in the Caribbean. Mainland Netherlands borders the North Sea to the north and west, Belgium to the south, and Germany to the east, and shares maritime borders...
illegally and suspicion of fraud
Fraud
In criminal law, a fraud is an intentional deception made for personal gain or to damage another individual; the related adjective is fraudulent. The specific legal definition varies by legal jurisdiction. Fraud is a crime, and also a civil law violation...
, although their implication with the e-mail scams is yet unknown.
Authorities in Nigeria have been slow to take action and for many years nothing was done. Nigeria has a reputation for criminals being able to avoid convictions through bribery and rumours abounded of official connivance in the scams. In 2003 however the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission
Economic and Financial Crimes Commission
The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission is a Nigerian law enforcement agency that investigates financial crimes such as advance fee fraud and money laundering...
(EFCC) was charged with tackling the problem. A couple of success stories including convictions in a large 419 case were reported in 2005.
Edna Fiedler, 44, of Olympia, Washington
Olympia, Washington
Olympia is the capital city of the U.S. state of Washington and the county seat of Thurston County. It was incorporated on January 28, 1859. The population was 46,478 at the 2010 census...
, on 25 June 2008, pleaded guilty in a Tacoma court and was sentenced to 2 years imprisonment and 5 years of supervised release or probation
Probation
Probation literally means testing of behaviour or abilities. In a legal sense, an offender on probation is ordered to follow certain conditions set forth by the court, often under the supervision of a probation officer...
in an Internet $1 million "Nigerian check scam." She conspired to commit bank, wire and mail fraud, against US citizens, specifically using the Internet, and by having an accomplice
Accomplice
At law, an accomplice is a person who actively participates in the commission of a crime, even though they take no part in the actual criminal offense. For example, in a bank robbery, the person who points the gun at the teller and asks for the money is guilty of armed robbery...
ship her counterfeit checks and money orders from Lagos
Lagos
Lagos is a port and the most populous conurbation in Nigeria. With a population of 7,937,932, it is currently the third most populous city in Africa after Cairo and Kinshasa, and currently estimated to be the second fastest growing city in Africa...
, Nigeria, last November. Fiedler shipped out $ 609,000 fake check and money orders when arrested and prepared to send additional $1.1 million counterfeit materials. The US Postal Service recently intercepted counterfeit checks, lottery tickets and eBay overpayment schemes with a face value of $2.1 billion.
In March 2009, agents from Spain's technological investigation squad, UDEF Central, arrested 23 people who were accused of defrauding 150 people in both the United States and Europe. According to the police, the suspects sent out 20,000 scam e-mails per day and had a list of the e-mail addresses of 55,000 potential victims in their possession.
In October 2009, the Nigerian government announced that they are launching "Operation Eagle Claw", a joint effort with Microsoft
Microsoft
Microsoft Corporation is an American public multinational corporation headquartered in Redmond, Washington, USA that develops, manufactures, licenses, and supports a wide range of products and services predominantly related to computing through its various product divisions...
to apprehend Nigerian 419 scammers.
Victim becoming a criminal
Victims of the fraud sometimes fall directly into crime by borrowing or stealing money to pay the advance fees, believing an early payday is imminent. Credit-card fraudCredit card fraud
Credit card fraud is a wide-ranging term for theft and fraud committed using a credit card or any similar payment mechanism as a fraudulent source of funds in a transaction. The purpose may be to obtain goods without paying, or to obtain unauthorized funds from an account. Credit card fraud is also...
, check kiting
Check kiting
Cheque fraud/check fraud refers to a category of criminal acts that involve making the unlawful use of cheques in order to illegally acquire or borrow funds that do not exist within the account balance or account-holder's legal ownership...
, and embezzlement
Embezzlement
Embezzlement is the act of dishonestly appropriating or secreting assets by one or more individuals to whom such assets have been entrusted....
are among the crimes committed to pay the advances, with an expectation of having the money to repay the unauthorized loans.
- Former Alcona County (Michigan) Treasurer Thomas A. Katona was sentenced to 9–14 years for his embezzlement of more than US$1.2 million in county funds in a Nigerian fraud scheme, which represented 25% of the county's budget for 2006.
- Robert Andrew Street, a Melbourne-based financial adviser, who fleeced his clients for over AU$1 million which he sent to the scammers in the hope of receiving US$65 million in return. Eventually the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASICAustralian Securities and Investments CommissionThe Australian Securities & Investments Commission is an independent Australian government body that acts as Australia's corporate regulator...
) investigated the victim, who had now become a con man himself. - A bookkeeper for the Michigan law firm Olsman Mueller & James who in 2002 emptied the company bank account of US$2.1 million in expectation of a US$4.5 million payout.
- John W. Worley, a Massachusetts psychotherapist, fell for a Nigerian scam and was convicted of taking money under false pretenses, his case being such that The New Yorker dubbed him The Perfect Mark in a headline.
- According to Kurt EichenwaldKurt EichenwaldKurt Alexander Eichenwald , an American writer and investigative reporter formerly with The New York Times and later with Condé Nast's business magazine, Portfolio...
, author of The Informant, Mark WhitacreMark WhitacreMark Edward Whitacre came to public attention in 1995 when, as president of the BioProducts Division at Archer Daniels Midland , he was the highest-level corporate executive in U.S. history to become a Federal Bureau of Investigation whistleblower...
defrauded Archer Daniels MidlandArcher Daniels MidlandThe Archer Daniels Midland Company is a conglomerate headquartered in Decatur, Illinois. ADM operates more than 270 plants worldwide, where cereal grains and oilseeds are processed into products used in food, beverage, nutraceutical, industrial and animal feed markets worldwide.ADM was named the...
, a food products manufacturer for which he was a division president, embezzling US$9 million during the same period of time that he was acting as an informant for the FBI in a price fixingPrice fixingPrice fixing is an agreement between participants on the same side in a market to buy or sell a product, service, or commodity only at a fixed price, or maintain the market conditions such that the price is maintained at a given level by controlling supply and demand...
scheme that ADM was involved in. His illegal activities in trying to procure funds for payment of his supposed Nigerian benefactors cost him his immunity in the price-fixing scandal, according to Eichenwald. James Lieber, author of Rats in the Grain and an attorney, also wrote a book about Whitacre in which he disagreed with Eichenwald's conclusions about Whitacre and the Nigerian scam. - In 2008, Georg Weiner, a German businessman was sentenced to 4 years in jail for fraud. He promised to save the professional team handballTeam handballHandball is a team sport in which two teams of seven players each pass a ball to throw it into the goal of the other team...
club TUSEM EssenTUSEM EssenTUSEM Essen is a team handball club from Essen, Germany. Currently, TUSEM Essen competes in the Handball-Bundesliga. In 2008, Georg Weiner, a German businessman was sentenced to 4 years in jail for fraud. He promised to save the professional team handball club TUSEM Essen from financial...
from financial difficulties with the fictional money that turned out to be part of several advance fee fraud schemes. Besides the money that he himself may have lost, Weiner also made the then club manager pay $31000 to the scammers. When the money did not materialize, the club lost its licence and was forcibly relegated to the third division. - In 2007, US Navy Lieutenant Milton Guy was sentenced to 28 months in prison, $14,000 in fines, and dismissal from the Navy after he was court martialed for stealing $140,000 from the safe aboard his San Diego-based ship in order to pay a Nigerian scammer.
Scam baiting
Various groups and individuals have engaged against "419" frauds by making scammers lose their time or some amount of money. One widely propagated report of such a scam baiting involved an American who identified himself as "James T. KirkJames T. Kirk
James Tiberius "Jim" Kirk is a character in the Star Trek media franchise. Kirk was first played by William Shatner as the principal lead character in the original Star Trek series. Shatner voiced Kirk in the animated Star Trek series and appeared in the first seven Star Trek movies...
" to a Nigerian completely unaware of the Star Trek
Star Trek
Star Trek is an American science fiction entertainment franchise created by Gene Roddenberry. The core of Star Trek is its six television series: The Original Series, The Animated Series, The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, Voyager, and Enterprise...
television series.
Terms used by 419-scammers
These terms are common words in the Nigerian pidgin English.Fall mugu (to):To be fooled, to become victim of advance-fee fraud
Flash of account:Cause a victim's bank account to temporarily show a large credit (which the bank reverses when they discover its false origins) to convince the victim the deal is legitimate.
Format:Scheme or script of an advance-fee fraud, e.g., the late dictator format, the next of kin format, the lottery format...
Guyman, guy:Con artist engaged in advance-fee fraud
Jokeman, Joker:A scam-baiter
Luxcini:An investment scam involving a line of men's luxury clothing based in Beverly Hills, California
Maga, mugu, mugun, mahi, magha, mahee, mayi, mayee, mgbada: Victim of advance-fee fraud ("Mugu" means "fool"—often used as an insult by scam-baiters
Scam baiting
Scam baiting is a form of Internet vigilantism, where the vigilante poses as a potential victim to the scammer in order to waste their time and resources, gather information that will be of use to authorities, and publicly expose the scammer. It is, in essence, a form of social engineering that may...
)
Modality: Method of funds transfer;
Oga or Chairman: Boss
Owner of the job, Catcher: Con artist who makes first contact with the victim, then passes him to another scammer to finish
Run: An illegal activity
Yahoo millionaire, yahoo boy: Scammers
Yahoo Yahoo: Someone who cons through e-mail, particularly through a Yahoo! address
Popular culture references
- In the 2007 FuturamaFuturamaFuturama is an American animated science fiction sitcom created by Matt Groening and developed by Groening and David X. Cohen for the Fox Broadcasting Company. The series follows the adventures of a late 20th-century New York City pizza delivery boy, Philip J...
movie, Bender's Big ScoreFuturama: Bender's Big ScoreFuturama: Bender's Big Score is an Annie Award-winning direct-to-video film based on the animated series Futurama. It was released in the United States on November 27, 2007. Bender's Big Score, along with the three follow-up films, comprise season five of Futurama, with each film being separated...
, Professor FarnsworthHubert J. FarnsworthProfessor Hubert J. Farnsworth, or simply The Professor, is a fictional character in the American animated television series Futurama. He is voiced by Billy West using a combination of impressions of Burgess Meredith and Frank Morgan. Farnsworth is the proprietor of the Planet Express delivery...
falls for a Lottery scamLottery scamA lottery scam is a type of advance-fee fraud which begins with an unexpected email notification that "You have won!" a large sum of money in a lottery...
after he thought he'd won the lottery by giving away his personal details on the Internet. Later, Nixon's Head falls for a 'sweepstakes' letter by the same scammers, while Zoidberg is taken by an advance-fee fraud. - In the BBC program The Real HustleThe Real HustleThe Real Hustle is a BBC television series made by Objective Productions and written by Alexis Conran and Paul Wilson. The show demonstrates confidence and magic tricks, distraction scams and proposition bets performed on members of the public by presenters Conran, Wilson and Jessica-Jane Clement...
broadcast in the United Kingdom, the hustlers demonstrated the 419 Scam to the hidden cameras in the 'High Stakes' series of the show. The hustle involved claims of moving £500,000 to the victims' bank account from Sierra LeoneSierra LeoneSierra Leone , officially the Republic of Sierra Leone, is a country in West Africa. It is bordered by Guinea to the north and east, Liberia to the southeast, and the Atlantic Ocean to the west and southwest. Sierra Leone covers a total area of and has an estimated population between 5.4 and 6.4...
but the victims needed to pay £5,000 for the paperwork in exchange for a bogus-bouncing check with the promise that they can keep 20% (£100,000) of the funds, which never materialises. - Nerdcore rapper MC FrontalotMC FrontalotDamian Hess , better known by stage name MC Frontalot, is a Brooklyn-based hip hop musician and self-proclaimed "world's 579th greatest rapper". He is best known in nerdcore hip hop and video game culture, for naming the nerdcore subgenre, and performing at Penny Arcades annual Penny Arcade Expo...
has written a song (Message No. 419) about the 419 scam on his debut album Nerdcore RisingNerdcore RisingNerdcore Rising is the official debut album by nerdcore rapper MC Frontalot. The album was first released on August 27, 2005 at the Penny Arcade Expo....
. - In the HBO comedy series, Flight of the ConchordsFlight of the ConchordsFlight of the Conchords are a New Zealand-based comedy duo composed of Bret McKenzie and Jemaine Clement. The duo's comedy and music became the basis of a BBC radio series and then an American television series, which premiered in 2007 on HBO, also called Flight of the Conchords.They were named...
episode The New CupThe New Cup"The New Cup" is the second episode of the second season of the HBO comedy series Flight of the Conchords. This episode was first aired in the United States on January 25, 2009.-Plot synopsis:...
, the band's manager, Murray, uses the band's emergency funds for an investment with a Nigerian, Mr. Nigel Soladu, who promises to offer "1000% profit." However, it turns out that Nigel Soladu is a real person and the investment offer is legitimate. The band receives a 1000% profit, which they use to get bailed out of jail. - In an episodeMichael's Birthday"Michael's Birthday" is the nineteenth episode of the second season of the American comedy television series The Office, and the show's twenty-fifth episode overall. Written by Gene Stupnitsky and Lee Eisenberg, and directed by Ken Whittingham, the episode first aired in the United States on March...
of NBC series The Office in which Michael ScottMichael Scott (The Office)Michael Gary Scott is a fictional character on NBC's The Office, portrayed by Steve Carell, and based on David Brent from the original British version. Michael, the central character of the series, was the manager of the Scranton branch of paper and printer distribution company Dunder Mifflin Inc...
tries to sell his subordinates on what he does not realize to be a pyramid schemePyramid schemeA pyramid scheme is a non-sustainable business model that involves promising participants payment or services, primarily for enrolling other people into the scheme, rather than supplying any real investment or sale of products or services to the public...
, Toby FlendersonToby FlendersonToby Wyatt Flenderson, M.S.W. born 1971 is a character from the US television series The Office. He is played by Paul Lieberstein. He is an original character and has no equivalent in the British version of the show, The Office.-Overview:...
asks, "Didn't you lose a lot of money on that other investment? The email?", to which Michael replies, "You know what Toby, when the son of the deposed king of Nigeria emails you directly, asking for help, you help! His father ran the freaking country! Okay?" - In The Sun Cow episode of the NickelodeonNickelodeon (TV channel)Nickelodeon, often simply called Nick and originally named Pinwheel, is an American children's channel owned by MTV Networks, a subsidiary of Viacom International. The channel is primarily aimed at children ages 7–17, with the exception of their weekday morning program block aimed at preschoolers...
TV series, Back at the BarnyardBack at the BarnyardBack at the Barnyard is a Nickelodeon CGI animated show that is a spin-off of the 2006 film Barnyard. The debut series premiered on September 29, 2007 on Nickelodeon. The show is produced by Omation Animation Studio, in association with Nickelodeon Animation Studios. The show mainly features pop...
, Otis, Pig and Abby received an e-mail from a Nigerian prince requesting for help, to which Abby replies with the farmer's credit card number and stating that the Internet does not lie. - In a 2009 episode of A&EA&E NetworkThe A&E Network is a United States-based cable and satellite television network with headquarters in New York City and offices in Atlanta, Chicago, Detroit, London, Los Angeles and Stamford. A&E also airs in Canada and Latin America. Initially named the Arts & Entertainment Network, A&E launched...
documentary InterventionIntervention (TV series)Intervention is an American television program about the realities facing addicts of many kinds.Each program follows one or two participants, each of whom has an addiction or other mentally and/or physically damaging problem and believes that they are being filmed for a documentary on their problem...
, a man habitually gives his family's money away to 419 scammers. - Two songs promoting advance fee fraud are popular in Nigeria: "I Go Chop Your Dollar - 419 Song" from Osuofia in LondonOsuofia in LondonOsuofia in London is a Nigerian Comedy film film written and directed by Kingsley Ogoro and starring African Movie Academy Award winner Nkem Owoh...
with the chorus "419 is just a game, you are the loser, I am the winner", and "Maga Don Pay" (The victims pay) by Kelly Hansome, with the chorus Maga don pay, shout hallelujah. In response to this song, 9 R&B and rap artists (Banky W.Banky W.Olubankole Wellington , known under the stage name Banky W, is an American Nigerian R&B artist.-Early life and career beginnings:...
, Bez, Cobhams, MI, Modele, Omawumi, Rooftop MCs, The Wordsmith) released the song "Maga No Need Pay". The lyrics and the chorus Maga no need pay for me to buy correct motor, for me to take make my dough explain to the youngsters that they can make a good living and that they will help their country by staying away from advance fee fraud. - Fela! The Musical makes several references to code 419.
- One of the series featured in webcomicWebcomicWebcomics, online comics, or Internet comics are comics published on a website. While many are published exclusively on the web, others are also published in magazines, newspapers or often in self-published books....
Irregular Webcomic!Irregular Webcomic!Irregular Webcomic! is a webcomic created by David Morgan-Mar, an Australian physicist. The comic is illustrated photographically, primarily with Lego figures, although a few of the story arcs use role playing game miniatures. The comic debuted on 31 December 2002 and ended on 29 October 2011,...
stars the Nigerian Finance Minister. - In the television series Sit Down, Shut Up, the teacher Stuart Proszakian sends money to a Nigerian Scam despite the other teachers' warnings. But at the end it turns out there really was a Nigerian Prince, and thanks Stuart for the donation.
- The ResidentsThe ResidentsThe Residents is an American art collective best known for avant-garde music and multimedia works. The first official release under the name of The Residents was in 1972, and the group has since released over sixty albums, numerous music videos and short films, three CD-ROM projects and ten DVDs....
included a song called "My Nigerian Friend" in their 2008 multimedia production The Bunny BoyThe Bunny BoyThe Bunny Boy is an album released on September 1, 2008, by avant-garde group The Residents. According to the group's blog, the album is similar to their previous albums Duck Stab, The Commercial Album and Demons Dance Alone and contains "19 fast paced songs" about "[o]bsession, insanity and the...
. "He said that he was hiding from the government, And said that he was dying and had to find a friend, He offered me some money, if he could use my name, I told him I liked bunnies, then he went away." - A segment of the 2008 This American LifeThis American LifeThis American Life is a weekly hour-long radio program produced by WBEZ and hosted by Ira Glass. It is distributed by Public Radio International on PRI affiliate stations and is also available as a free weekly podcast. Primarily a journalistic non-fiction program, it has also featured essays,...
episode Enforcers discusses scammers from Nigeria and a group of activists that try to scam the scammers. . - In the 2011 episode of How I Met Your MotherHow I Met Your MotherHow I Met Your Mother is an American sitcom that premiered on CBS on September 19, 2005, created by Craig Thomas and Carter Bays.As a framing device, the main character, Ted Mosby with narration by Bob Saget, in the year 2030 recounts to his son and daughter the events that led to his meeting...
entitled Oh HoneyOh Honey"Oh Honey" is the fifteenth episode of the sixth season of the CBS sitcom How I Met Your Mother and the 127th episode overall. It aired on February 7, 2011.-Plot:...
, a gullible cousin played by Katy PerryKaty PerryKaty Perry is an American singer, songwriter and actress. Born in Santa Barbara, California, and raised by Christian pastor parents, Perry grew up listening to only gospel music and sang in her local church as a child. After earning a GED during her first year of high school, she began to pursue a...
remarks, "Maybe I should feel weird about giving the guy my social security number, but the guy is a Nigerian Prince!"
See also
- 419eater.com419eater.com419eater.com is a scam baiting website which focuses on advance-fee fraud. The name 419 comes from "419 fraud", another name for advance fee fraud, and itself derived from the relevant section of the Nigerian criminal code. The website founder, Michael Berry, goes by the alias Shiver Metimbers...
- Fred AjuduaFred AjuduaFred Ajudua is a Nigerian accused of being an advance-fee fraud scammer. This is a form of fraud that appears to be a field in which Nigerian entrepreneurs were pioneers, and remain prominent. The victim receives a letter or email asking for assistance in handing a very large amount of money, in...
- Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre Canadian law enforcement project combating advance-fee fraud
- Economic and Financial Crimes CommissionEconomic and Financial Crimes CommissionThe Economic and Financial Crimes Commission is a Nigerian law enforcement agency that investigates financial crimes such as advance fee fraud and money laundering...
(EFCC) The Nigerian financial authority mandated to investigate against advance-fee frauds. - Employment scamsEmployment scamsEmployment scams, also known as job scams, are a form of advance fee fraud scamming where certain unscrupulous persons posing as recruiters or employers offer attractive employment opportunities which require the job seeker to pay them money in advance, usually under the guise of work visas, travel...
- List of e-mail scams
- Nigerian organized crimeNigerian organized crimeNigerian organized crime, or Nigerian OC, may refer to a number of fraudsters, drug traffickers and racketeers of various sorts originating from Nigeria...
- PhishingPhishingPhishing is a way of attempting to acquire information such as usernames, passwords, and credit card details by masquerading as a trustworthy entity in an electronic communication. Communications purporting to be from popular social web sites, auction sites, online payment processors or IT...
- Pigeon dropPigeon dropPigeon drop is a confidence trick in which a mark or "pigeon" is persuaded to give up a sum of money in order to secure the rights to a larger sum of money, or more valuable object...
- Scam baitingScam baitingScam baiting is a form of Internet vigilantism, where the vigilante poses as a potential victim to the scammer in order to waste their time and resources, gather information that will be of use to authorities, and publicly expose the scammer. It is, in essence, a form of social engineering that may...
- Spam e-mailE-mail spamEmail spam, also known as junk email or unsolicited bulk email , is a subset of spam that involves nearly identical messages sent to numerous recipients by email. Definitions of spam usually include the aspects that email is unsolicited and sent in bulk. One subset of UBE is UCE...
- True-believer syndromeTrue-believer syndromeTrue-believer syndrome is an informal or rhetorical term coined by M. Lamar Keene in his 1976 book The Psychic Mafia. Keene used the term to refer to people who continued to believe in a paranormal event or phenomenon even after it had been proven to have been staged...
- On October 1ST 2011, A team of Nigerian citizens launched an online campaign to show case 419 reasons to love Nigeria, to ensure the country is not associated with the sins of just a few. They put all their entries on this site here http://www.419positive.org/419-reasons-to-like-nigeria-complete-list/
External links
- UK Metro Police Antifraud: Metro Police UK Antifraud Division
- ScamWatch: Australia's ScamWatch
- RomanceScam: Nigerian Dating Scammers
- Interview with an ex-scammer, January 2010: Scam Detectives
- RentScams: Rental Property Scams
- VP44 Spam & Scam Database: large repository of 419 scam samples
- People reported Scam Database: large real online scams collection to search and report