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They probably see it as an investment in what is currently their third to fifth largest national industry.

Nigeria-originated spam is just a contemporary version of the decades old 419 scams that apparently netted US$ 5 billion way back in 1996 itself.

Check this out.
I recall reports of wealthy buisnessmen held in Nigeria by hostage takers.
I don't have the link on me.

If you read the links in the original post, especially http://home.rica.net/alphae/419coal/ then it is clear that the people doing the scamming is very well connected to the elite within the government, it also seems that the elite in Nigerian society is covering the scammers legally. It would definately have a major and immediate effect to shut down the links.

There are a lot more people in all the countries you named. Also, Germany is special. A lot of Engineering news comes out of Germany.

Besides Germany, which earns special fame due to it's accomplishments, the other countries you mentioned are much bigger than Kenya. I might also add that this is a US site, and therefore slightly slanted towards US news. If something came from the US, we'd like to know more specifically than even that - we'd like to know where in the US.

I have a feeling that if you had discoveries in Sri Lanka and Latvia you'd get "Scientists in Asia discover X," or "Scientists in Europe discover y."

Not to worry. If one African country does something for long enough, and they get a name for themselves that sets them apart from the rest of Africa. Nigeria has proven that.

From the newsgroup thread...

The SCC team does not expect you to trust us. To address this problem, we will split up the information into many files and you may purchase each part for a fraction of the total price. As your confidence grows with SCC, you may feel compelled to purchase these parts in bulk. Here is an example:
We are offering you a ~1 gigabyte compressed file for $10,000. We offer this file in 20 50 megabyte parts at $500 per part (10,000/20). You send us $500, we send you part 1. You send another $500, we send part 2. You choose to send $1000 and we send parts 3 and 4, etc etc. The rate that you purchase pieces is entirely up to you. As your confidence grows, we know that you will choose bigger pieces.
We also include detailed instructions on how to decrypt and put together the peices, it is a simple process that can be done with any unix computer.

The problem with this scheme is that critical elements of the source can be intentionally withheld and that those pieces could be sold in all likelihood at a ridiculous amount. I mean if a moronic company actually decided to buy source code from these guys, and they are spending $5,000 on each "piece" of the code, they will want the entire thing. This goes beyond just scamming the software companies... this is almost similar to a Nigerian 419 scam in a way.

These Nigerian scam guys may look like a joke to most of us, but they are dangerous criminals who would, in fact, kill you if you make trouble and they could get a hand on you. There have been several occasions already, for example a Norwegian businessman named Kjetil Moe in 1999. The guy was 65 years old and of the old school where he thought that any problems could be resolved by a face-to-face meeting. He actually travelled to South-Africa to meet these guys. He promptly went missing and was found killed later. The newspaper coverage was quite intensive at the time. Here's one link.

US law enforcement do care. Check out all of the US agencies fighting 419 scams on this page.

surely that shuld be 419 Desktops?

in parts of Africa, anyway...

Can someone tell me what's up with these west african countries? Nigeria for example, it's all over the scam radar, their area code is synonymous with scam.

How come we don't hear of scammers from Cuba, Russia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Korea, or any of america's historical and/or current enemies? Is it a media thing to drop west african country names when they refer to these kinds of scam?

Does Nigeria really have a monopoly on scamming stupid americans? Are their organized crime mobs this pathetic that the best they can come up with is phone and email scams? Why can't they go into drug trade or union corruption like a *real* mafia would?

As hard as it is to believe, the 419 coalition takes a serious stance on those Nigerian scams. They claim that it is the third to fifth largest industry in Nigeria and suggests the government is actually involved. It seems to have been around since the early eighties.

Now if those scams were sent specifically to some rich blokes with the official Nigerian government's letterhead printed on top, I might understand their concern, but as it stands, it is so obviously a fraud that I can't help but think that those who swallow it, deserved it.

Alternatively, you could see it as one of the more original ways for a third-world country to reclaim some of the riches we stole from them.

• Websites Fighting the Nigerian Scam/419
• Nigerian Advance Fee Scam
• US Secret Service on 419
• Break The Chain
• 419 Coalition (as noted in the article)

• 419 Eater
• Scam Joke Page
• ScamOrama
• the spam letters
• spl's soapbox

• Websites Fighting the Nigerian Scam/419
• Nigerian Advance Fee Scam
• US Secret Service on 419
• Break The Chain
• 419 Coalition (as noted in the article)

• 419 Eater
• Scam Joke Page
• ScamOrama
• the spam letters
• spl's soapbox

This is a site that was setup to fight the scam and to educate people.

So probably the next target of US army to invade will be Nigeria, and the next Osama Bin Laden will be Mariam Abacha

The 419 coalition website fights the nigerian scam

scam alert

A hilarious account of a revenge killing related to the 419 scam

Won't someone think of the Nigerians!

<G>

Anyone who has lived in a cave for the last two years and isn't aware of the Advance Fee Fraud scheme, which is run out of Nigeria, most other west African countries south of the Sahara, Zimbabwe, Afghanistan, and the Netherlands as of the last time I checked my spamtrap, should check out the following URLs:

crimes-of-persuasion.com: Nigerian 419 Advance Fee Fraud
U. S. Secret Service: Advance Fee Fraud Advisory
The 419 Coalition Website

Believe it or not, there have been billions lost to this scam, from people who should have been smarter. (And less greedy.)

US Secret Service
Financial Crimes Division
950 H Street N.W.
Suite 5300
Washington, DC 20223
Phone: (202) 406-5850
Fax: (202) 406-5031

If you are just reporting a scam, mark your email "No Financial Loss - For Your Database".

See the 419 Coalition web site.

The webpage linked to in the submission mentions you can forward your 419 spam to the US Secret Service Task Force. It wouldn't hurt to sent it to the Federal Trade Commission as well.

The Infamous 419 Scam

It's a billion dollar industry in Nigeria, and has paid for the careers of much of that nation's government.

It has, however, allowed for some very interesting counter-scams:

The "Buddy Weiserman Counter-Scam

The "David Lee Roth" Counter-Scam, with cache

The "Kieron Dykes" Counter-Scam

:^)

Ryan Fenton

Subject: Re: confidentaility
To: hamza kalu <hamzakalu@yahoo.com>
From: Jonathan Land <jland@incomplete.net>
Date: 08/08/2001

Jonathan Land,

Hamza, You're the funniest fucker in the world. I'd like to see your African Voodoo against my American Technology. I'm a top muckity-muck in the Department Of Defense. I'll have a Smart Bomb in your lap faster than you can play Hot Potato with it. They'll be picking those voodoo pins out of the remnants of your ass right up until the funeral. So seriously, I'm not a cop or anything: a) Are you even remotely near Nigeria?
b) How many people do you send emails like this out to, and how many actually fall for it?
c) Why did you keep writing back to me when I was obviously yanking you harder than a wood chipper? I could imagine that you deal with a lot of humorless folks in this line of work, and I might be a breath of fresh air. Essentially, I'm really curious... how well has this racket worked for you? According to this site: http://home.rica.net/alphae/419coal/ the scam you're running is actually a major industry in Nigeria, so I guess it's going well. Jon

Actually, it's often the other way around.

While it's all well and good to laugh at the 419 scams we get in our mailbox, people have been kidnapped and murdered as part of these scams.

Maybe the spam you got today was from some joker in a trailer park trying his luck. But I've seen some with headers that do indicate points of origin in Nigeria or other third-world countries.

I follow the advice of the 419 Coalition's website, and forward them to the U.S. Secret Service, clearly indicating that I have suffered "NO FINANCIAL LOSS", and that my report is merely for the benefit of their archives.

If the headers indicate (say, a city name on the reverse DNS of the dialup or cablemodem used to inject the spam) a point of origin, I usually add a note to the effect that the spammer may be based in whatever region the headers indicate. A little digging around WHOIS servers can usually get a probable country of origin.

The one thing I never do is tip off the scammer that I know what he's up to. Remember, no SMTP header can tell you whether you're dealing with a chickenboner in a trailer park, or the outer edge of a real organized crime syndicate.

Suppose that only 1% of your 419 scammers are "serious". Your mileage may vary, but thumbing your nose at 100 people, one of whom is running an organized crime syndicate, still qualifies as a cheap ticket out of the gene pool in my books. Are the cheap laughs from trolling the 99 trailer-park denizens really worth the risk?

Let the Treasury guys take care of it. That's what they're paid for.

For more information, see the 419 Coalition website. This is a huge problem in Nigeria. There is massive corruption in the Nigerian government and judicial system. It has also hurt legitimate Nigerian businesses.

we've actually gotten contacted for this scam through not only e-mail but through faxes at my office...yeah, like we're gonna think that a random fax that comes through is legit...right... that's almost as bad as the old "I send you this file in order to have your advice" virus...

in any case, the Spam letters guy also has this link which has good information about fighting the nigeria scam...

Nothing? Guess you should have checked out the Culture Jamming: Scams & Frauds page instead.