nigerian frauds revisited

[ajit]

i know it is a old story but i was just reading this article on http://zone-h.org this morning i personally liked it very much and thought it could be of help to many ppl who would like to know how exactly they fooled ppl http://www.zone-h.com/nigerianfraud .i think it was a perfect plan ppl of all kind were involved in it .

and again sorry for thje delay.

[tonybradley]

While I get the scam spam at least twice a week and reject it out-of-hand as an obvious (and ridiculous) hoax, people still fall for it:

Known to law enforcement as the "Nigerian Advance-Fee Fraud" or "419 Scam" ("419" being the applicable section of the country's criminal code), the Secret Service terms the phenomenon a "growing epidemic," and according to the Postal Service, it is accountable for losses of more than $100 million a year to American citizens alone

Recently a woman in my area was arrested for imbezzling $3.5 million from her company to funnel into this scam. All along she thought she would eventually get the promised payoff and would repay her company, take the rest of her money and retire.

At least 15 people are known to have been murdered in connection with these scams since the early 1990s

Full Article

There is a new "variant" on this theme too using Ebay. It was mentioned recently in a DHS (Department of Homeland Security) NIPC (National Infrastructure Protection Center) report. Here is an excerpt from a message board:

I heard a new one today. The story goes that a seller on ebay was over
paid $10,000 by an alleged Nigerian. When contacted, the person said
that they had trouble exchanging American money, and to just send them
back a check for the over payment. The seller then deposited the money
order, and wrote and sent a check back before the original check
cleared. The original check was bogus, so the person was out $10,000.

http://lists.jammed.com/crime/2002/10/0012.html

The fact that this thing started decades ago as a fax scam, morphed into an email scam and is now spreading to Ebay just goes to prove P.T. Barnum's (although they claim he didn't say it: read here) illustrious quote- "there's a sucker born every minute."