419 Scam Costs Britons 8.4m GBP in 2002

Albanach writes "In this article the Scotland on Sunday newspaper reports figures from the UK's National Criminal Intelligence Service which show 150 Britons were caught out by the Nigerian 419 scam and its variations in 2002, with a total loss of 8.4m GBP ($13.3m US)or around 57,000 GBP ($90,000 US) a head. "

Comments

How stupid can people be?

[osgeek]

While I heartily encourage the full prosecution of the con artists, I don't feel all that sorry for the victims.

I mean, if you're that stupid, it's probably best for society if you don't have any economic influence anyway. Your right to vote should probably be taken away as well. :P

Re:How stupid can people be?

[dattaway]

I mean, if you're that stupid...

Not to mention these people are directly supporting the spam industry and making it very lucrative. The victims so richy got what they deserved. Consider that their fine and tax for stupidity.

Re:How stupid can people be?

[nomadic]

I would feel some sympathy for them if they were merely stupid.

However, most the people who fall for it are also dishonest; in most cases they think they're bilking the Nigerian (or Botswanan or whatever) governments. Makes me feel a bit less sorry for them.

Re:How stupid can people be?

[Anonymous Coward]

Hell, I bought WorldCom, because someone not smart enough to be a schoolteacher became an EdwardJones broker and convinced me to buy it.

Everybody is a fuckwit, at least once in their life.

Just goes to show

[jaymzter]

You can't cheat an honest person. They weren't gullible, they were willing to lie for money.

Re:Just goes to show

[kmellis]

"You can't cheat an honest person."

Sure you can. The "Western Union" wire-transfer scam featured in Mamet's "House of Games" comes to mind. It goes like this:

The con artist goes to a Western Union outlet and sits down as if he's (she's) waiting for a wire transfer. Time passes. The mark comes in, someone who is obviously waiting for a transfer and is impatient when they find that it's not arrived. The con artist strikes up a friendly conversation with the mark. They both mention how they're waiting for a desperately needed wire transfer and they're both impatient. The con artist suddenly gets an idea. "Hey", he says, "You know what? If my wire gets here before yours does, what'll you say that I just loan you the $X you need and you can pay me back tomorrow after your transfer gets here?" The mark says, "Gosh, that's really nice of you. And I'll do the same thing for you." Since the con artist doesn't actually have money coming in, inevitably the mark gets his transfer and offers the loan to the con artist. The con artist takes it and walks away, never to be heard from again.

Now, this is only marginally plausible, but it's the example that came to my mind. Most people these days would politely refuse the offer, but some wouldn't, and some of them would gullibly offer to reciprocate.

"Mike", the con artist in "House of Games" that demonstrates this con to the psychiatrist, asks her if she know why these are called "confidence games". She responds, "Because someone gives you their confidence?" Mike says, "No. Because I give them my confidence." Which is a brilliant line and also very true.

Almost every person has some "weakness" or another that makes them vulnerable to a con artist. Often, yes, it's greed and dishonesty. But it can also be generosity, compassion, or simple confusion. And, more often than you might think, it can be arrogance or over-confidence. Some of the people here who are ridiculing all victims of a scam as being "stupid" may be vulnerable to having their overconfidence exploited. Carl Sagan (and others) wrote about how it is that scientists seem to be surprisingly easily tricked by "scientific" fraudsters (paranormalists, etc.). It's because the scientist's overconfidence is taken advantage of; that the fraudsters, like magicians, misdirect the scientist's attention to areas that they naturally focus upon and perform their slight of hand in places where the scientists aren't looking and didn't think to look. A con artist will do the same thing--set up something that looks like a scam to attract the suspicious mark's attention, then perform the real scam in a direction the mark isn't looking.

Everyone thinks they are immune to being conned. They're almost all wrong.

That said, there's almost no chance that I could be scammed by a con artist appealing to my greed. I'm automatically suspicious of any potential windfall from any source. But, on the other hand, I'm almost certainly vulnerable to a carefully crafted scam that takes advantage of generosity or compassion like the one I detail above. The only comfort I take in that is that there are more scams leveraging the mark's greed than there are that leverage other characteristics.

A classic, authoritative book on the history, psychology, and sociology of confidence artists and their cons is "The Big Con" by David Maurer.

The scam is in the transfer fees.

[wackybrit]

If you could clear out someone's account just from their account number and sort code then anyone could it.. after all, you have to swap these details to send money to each other with Internet banking.

What the article fails to point out is that these scammers don't just drain your bank account, they actually request you pay certain 'transfer fees' so that they can get the money moved across. These 'transfer fees', inevitably, are thousands of dollars. Anyone paying them is an idiot.

And that's all this is. I think those scammers deserve every red cent. THIS IS A TAX ON THE STUPID and ignorant, something we should have the state taxing, but if the Nigerians have to do it, so be it.

This is another 'tax' that, like duty on cigarettes and alcohol, doesn't affect me at all.. so I'm all for it.

(Notice how the people scammed all actually had thousands in savings.. a sign that the greedy people aren't the poor, they're the already rich)

Re:The scam is in the transfer fees.

[cperciva]

Notice how the people scammed all actually had thousands in savings.. a sign that the greedy people aren't the poor, they're the already rich

Bad statistics. The people scammed all had money (to begin with) because the people running these scams don't bother with people who don't have money.

Rich people, historically, have been more likely to die in Concorde plane crashes, but that doesn't mean that rich people enjoy flying on Concorde jets more; it just means that the poor never get onto concorde jets in the first place.

Stupid people are everywhere

[codewolf]

Every time I hear news like this I have to remind myself that 50% of the human race is below average intelligence. Usually when I mention this to someone they say "that can't be true!" Then I know that they are one of the lower half. A fool and his money.....

Re:What did you expect?

[freestyle-fiend]

Actually, the Europeans who migrated to America were far more likely to get scurvy than Europeans who never went to sea, so those scurvy-ridden Brits are now called Americans.

Re:I wonder...

[FTL]

> if more people in britan just reported it. Americans tend to not report things of this nature out of shame.

I suspect the difference is that the UK government is much more protective of its citizens than American governments. In general, North American governments disallow things that are proven to be dangerous, whereas European government allows things proven to be safe.

The effect is that over here there is a much greater level of trust amongst consumers. So when a scam artist arrives, more people fall for it.

These people make SPAM work...

[Kjella]

Seriously, you're willing to put $90000 on the table in a scam. You're gullible beyond belief. How many more do you think will pay $10-100 or more for penis enlargements, make-money-fast, diplomas and herbal viagra? One of those famous scientists said something like "Only two things are infinite, human stupitidy and the universe, and I'm not sure about the latter". He's right you know...

Kjella

Re:More information

[nautical9]

That revenge killing isn't all that hilarious... the murder victim was a simple consul for the Nigerian Embassy, and had nothing to do with the scams - and a secretary was also wounded. I imagine the crazed and confused 72-year old gunman just assumed anyone linked to Nigeria must be in on it.

Now if the murder victim was one of the scam artists, I'd be dancing a little jig right now.

Re:Have we forgot?

[leeward]

I think that the 'victims' here are the rest of us. I could care less about the people that lost their money. But in the last few months, the amount of 419 spam I get has simply exploded, to the point where it now makes up a noticeable portion of my spam load. And the reason is of course that the scammers have found that the 419 stuff pays.

Re:I wonder...

[bluesangria]

What an interesting argument for NOT having your government be a nanny - it ends up with "childish" citizens.

blue

Re:Where is the list?

[kmellis]

Years and years ago, when I was about 23 or so, I was "recruited" by somone to some sort of insurance selling thing that was actually a sort of pyramid scam. This became more and more obvious as the presentation went on. But, you know, I could have been wrong. So I asked questions. They weren't used to people asking questions. During a break, I asked some of the other people there if they really thought this was all on the up and up and that they were guaranteed a five or six figure income within the first year. "Why wouldn't this be true?" was their universal response.

To my mind, the idea that you could go and do something trivially easy and become rich makes it self-evidently untrue. Otherwise, everyone would be doing it. However, the people that fall for these sorts of things see it the other way around. They think, "But your skepticism is an example of why everyone isn't doing this, and why people like us--who can see an opportunity for what it is--are the few that make so much money this way."

Personally, I think this susceptibility is a specific example of a more general problem. The general problem is that people are not even remotely aware enough of how likely they are--on any given judgment--to be wrong. I'm always aware that a) I could be wrong about any specific matter; and b) I am definitely wrong about some significant number of matters at any given time. I'm always looking for evidence that contradicts my always-a-work-in-progress judgment. People that want to influence you and fool you about something, if you're not ever vigilant (and have a prideful fear of being proven wrong), will only need to sumrount that first and only barrier of doubt--then they have you hooked. It's smooth sailing from then on out.

Re:Some of those are quite elaborate

[MyHair]

I have received hundreds, and every one of them has been in broken english, some of the phrases are laughable at best.

Scamming is about distracting the brain away from the absurdity of the scam. It's a cleverly crafted letter, believe me. The details such as the upper case and bad spelling are distractions; the large amount of money is a distraction--either a temptation for you to steal it all or 'proof' that these people have plenty of money and don't need to scam you, depending on your type. The government employee or royal relationship, the details of why they can't get it out or why it's stuck, etc..

It's all designed to distract you and to be interpreted different ways by different personality types. Your brain throws out what's not relevant to you and rationalizes the existing information into something you can trust. The brain rationalizes the bad grammar as the fact that they are from Nigeria or that the writer is stressed from being in a hurry or from political strife and somehow that enhances the feeling of trust. In the case of the grandparent post the letter was directed more specifically, probably as a legitimate business case, and in that situation a different approach (proper spelling and grammar, correct title and name) is used to create the distractions and trust.

Some suckers see an opportunity to steal the whole bankroll; some see an 'honest' chance at getting a large fee for helping these people out (and yet somehow ignore the fact that the people are violating rules and laws in the process); and so forth.

After making contact the scammers are skilled at presenting plausible-sounding scenarios where the money they need from you decreases or increases as they find out what you're able and/or willing to pay.

I'm speaking from personal experience and not from reading or traditional schooling: I got conned once on a small time basis ($117 by two guys on the street, but I was 18 and that was all the money I had that week), and in retrospect I see all the ways I discarded some of the information they gave me and rationalized the rest, and how different people would've fallen for the same scam for different reasons; it's quite a marvel what the brain does and how scammers exploit it. In retrospect my guys tempted me with greed, good samaritanism, religion, sex and race relations (political correctness) that I can recall--there was probably more. I fell for the good samaritanism and race relations and ignored the other temptations, but once they find out what you're about they work on trust and confidentiality. The key is to build mutual trust so they can walk away with your money (literally in my case), and for you to not tell anyone else because a third party will almost always immediately see how stupid the whole thing is because they didn't go through the ridiculous brain conditioning you did to arrive at the mental state you're at.

That con was the most humiliating event in my life. At the time $117 was a lot of money but not so much that I went hungry or lost my home, but the shame and humiliation is for how I fell for something so stupid. 15 years later I can now look back on it as a cheap lesson and thank God it didn't happen later when I had more to lose, but come to think of it I've never told anyone outside the family about it until now. I was living week-to-week then; I can't imagine how people who've lost months or years of work/money would feel; probably suicidal.

It is hard to feel sorry for people who fell for the 419 scam, and even I had no sympathy for them. But now that I recall my con, you need to realize these con men are very professional and know how to twist your head off of your shoulders and make you believe anything; once you fall for the initial hook they are experts at maneuvering you to the sting.

Re:Tax on the stupid !?!?

[Anonymous Coward]

I must strongly disagree.

The typical victim is an elderly person, retired, lonely, starting to loose touch with reality, strongly believing that everyone is honest because everyone was so darn nice with them for the last many years. You would be surprise how many elders are happy to simply hear the phone ring and to talk to any phone marketer, no matter what they sell.

85 years old "good person" from a rural background where everyone knows and help everyone else, suddenly thrown in the global IT world can easily get scammed. Ever spent some time in a retirement home?

It is easy to say "They are gullible and got what they deserve" when you listen to the news every day, read the Internet, know what the "Enron Scandal" is, live in a big city where people shoot guns in the streets every week. 90% of the industrialized/western population had a better view of life in the last century.

I am from Montreal the North American capital of phone scams. Typically "You won a Cadillac, but you have to pay for the tax." Once the check is received, "We forgot to mention, you have to pay for shipping fees also." Then it's border tax, and then more.

The statistics are horrible, with more than 90% of the victims in the "confused elderly" category. More than 60% of the victims will even fall for it more than once; they just wait 6-12 months and call again. Phone list of the victims sells for a small fortune.

Some scammers call pretending a bad number, but will make social conversation with the lonely elderly and make friends over a period of weeks, then pretend an urgent trouble "I will lose my house, am forced to quit school... I don't know what to do or where to go for help!" At then end "I thought we where friend I guess you are just a selfish person".

Re:Does that mean

[Evil-G]

There are around 50 million people in the UK, and only 150 of them actually got scammed by this. Therefore I can only assume that you are one of the 150 gullible easy targets as the statistics show that the majority of us are not :-)