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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. "
The various governments of the world get together and spend the money to educate the public about the Nigerian scam. My relatives delete the e-mail because it's too good to be true, not because they know it's a known scam.
Scurvy makes you think crazy things.
Bowie J. Poag
if more people in britan just reported it. Americans tend to not report things of this nature out of shame. Anyone know anything about the numbers in other countries?
While I heartily encourage the full prosecution of the con artists, I don't feel all that sorry for the victims.
:P
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.
Why are you letting these clowns ruin our country?
Dear Sir
We Do Not Know Each Other But I Am The Son Of The President Of Scotland Yard. I Need Your Help To Recover The Sum Of One Point Five Billion Pounds (Bp 1,500,000,000) Which We Have Recovered In Nigeria. To Proceed Please Send Your Credit Card With The Pin On A Post It...
(lameness filter preventing to post in upper case)
Google passes Turing test : see my journal
Or not, if that spelling's anything to go by... Just kidding ;o)
I think it's mainly jelousy on our part. We used to be a world player but now we're reduced to hanging on to the tails of Mr. Bush like some sort of flunkie. Most Americans I have met and spoken to are as intelligent and well-mannered as any Briton, most of the time more so. You just have a propensity for electing to office the same fools we do :o)
Resistance is futile. Reactance buggers it up.
Never was the National Criminal Intelligence Service less aptly named.
who have suffered financially due to the scam. However shooting a (Nigerian) diplomat is definitely not going to help things...
United States President George W. Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair announced today that Nigeria was the latest target country in the "War on Spam." "Too many rich people have had their money unflairly taken away by these evil people." said President Bush. He continued by saying "We shall wipe them off the continent of Australica." Prime Minister Blair stood at his side in solemn agreement. After President Bush finished, Blair corrected Bush's mistakes for reporters including "unflairly" and "Australica."
You've really got to pity the legitimately deposed dictatorial families that must have a way to get their money out of the country.
They send out email to a select few upstanding citizens, hoping to be able to get their millions out of the country for a small percentage of the money. Then, no one believes that the offer is legitimate!
Yes, these deposed dictator's relatives are the real victims in all of this! Let's not forget about their tragic plight.
Why are you letting these clowns ruin our country?
You can't cheat an honest person. They weren't gullible, they were willing to lie for money.
If thou see a fair woman pay court to her, for thus thou wilt obtain love
People....
THE 'victims' tooks part in the scam, trying to import and export money while avoiding reporting it and paying taxes.
Shouldn't all 150 go to prison? Remember, the fraud of millions is also on Brittain's side of the table with its citizens...
Cover your eyes and click this link!
The 419 coalition website fights the nigerian scam
scam alert
A hilarious account of a revenge killing related to the 419 scam
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)
mogorific carpentry experiments
What if I gave them my bank account with £0? Tell them to deposit into an empty account.. instead of providing your *real* account? Also, can the banks track who makes the withdrawl so the criminals can be caught?
Fight Crime - Shoot Back!
For some time now I just forward all of this stuff to:
419@spring39.demon.co.uk and new.scotland.yard@met.police.uk
OK, not difficult, but my bit at helping nail these crooks.
The $90,000 per head figure is really tough to buy. The only monetary figure they name is a £7,000 loss for a recent victim. That seems about right to me. I'd be really interested in knowing what the median loss was.
I used to be a narrator for bad mimes. (wright)
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.....
http://www.codewolf.com - Just good stuff to waste time
Seriously, though, has anybody considered how easy it would be to data mine the output from credit cards or supermarket loyalty cards etc. to identify gullible people? People with a big annual spend who buy gold plated hi-fi connectors, or crystals to stop damaging radiation from computer monitors, or some of the more ridiculously expensive "health" foods. Oh wait, I just saw the special offers on my credit card statement. Someone just did.
Panurge has posted for the last time. Thanks for the positive moderations.
He's suggesting the victims should use the Twinkie defense. The sad offshoot of which is scurvy.
Scam o Rama is devoted to receipients of 419 scam letters responding in commical replies. Very funny and entertaining. One guy convinced a scammer to send him a gold sample which he used to buy beer.
Will Scotland Yard please release the 150 e-mail addresses?
I have some really interesting never-to-be-repeated offers that will interest them.
As an experiment, my wife replied to one of these scam emails when we first got it. We pretended to be interested in it, and then laughed as we led them on, for at least 5 or 6 emails in a row. "Sure, we'll meet up with you - at this place and time." Then, "Oh, sorry - we weren't able to make it. Hope you didn't wait for us long? Let's try this again." Finally, we just let things get absurd enough that the scammer realized we weren't serious, and gave up.
Well, ever since then, guess what? We get about one of these scam emails per *day*, all slightly different and from different origins.
So I guess these scammers resell mailing lists of people who reply to their original scam letters!
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
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
One of my favorites (which isn't listed on that page above) is: "I have reached an age where, if someone tells me to put my shoes on, I don't have to."
"Empathise with stupidity, and you're halfway to thinking like an idiot." - Iain M. Banks
Now, I'm not jusifying these criminals who defraud people. Personally, as a Nigerian, I am embarrassed to get these letters as well, and once in a while I send a scathing reply (which I bet is promptly deleted)
:-D
:-)
:-)
Don't forget that "no truly honest person falls for these scams". The greedy fools who wanted to defraud the Nigerian government got defrauded themselves, and they have the gall to complain
But one thought constantly crosses my mind when I hear people complaining about these crooks. I am ever surprised that no one talks about colonization, slavery, land grabs, and all the other "scams" the nation of Britain pulled on Nigerians for centuries. And don't forget that those scams were sanctioned by the British Government itself
No, I'm not bitter... part of that was our fault. But when enteprising young men from Nigeria (much like British "entrepreneurs" in the late 1800s and early 1900s) decide to fleece Britain or America, fooling the locals from those countries, I must admit it makes me chuckle just a little bit
Yes some American and British victims are "innocent", and I realize a few people have actually died while pursuing these quests for illegal money, so I'm not trying to belittle the situation; governments should continue the crackdown on these perpertrators, and their foolish victims. Yes the victims; what ever happened to aiding and abbetting a crime? That should make them delete those emails quick!
I hope I have been able to add another dimension to your thoughts when you read about 419 scams.
Nwanua.
I understand they don't clean you out right away. They actually string you along for a while and get you to raise some more funds to cover "unforseen complications" or bribes or some such nonsense. Once they've bilked you out of a lot more than the value of your actual bank account, then they vanish. A woman in the US (CA I believe) actually embezzeled her law firm's ENTIRE CASH RESERVES to give to these d!ckwads. The firm found out when their settlement cheques to clients bounced!
Freedom: "I won't!"
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.
Send me ten quid or a 5 gallons of diesel and I'll cut the fibre for you. Throw in a couple of cans of Guinness and a Tom Yam Chicken with Fried Rice and I'll bury the spammer while I'm backfilling the hole.
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 :-)
I don't suppose I could convince you to describe it? If it's really that embarassing, then never mind.
Okay, but realize it will probably sound completely stupid to you; it even sounds stupid to me; it sounded stupid to me as soon as I realized that my money was gone.
I don't recall all the details, but here is the gist of it:
I was 18 and driving home from either school (college) or work. While driving past a small old-fashioned grocery store two blocks from my house a black man (I'm white) waved me down asking for help; I don't recall why I stopped; I think he had money or something in his hand that attracted my attention. (Note that non gullible people would've driven by; us suckers wander out of the crowd and identify ourselves to a troll like this, so they already know they have someone they can work with.)
He spoke poor english and wanted some help with money; he had a thick roll of it which later I figured out must've been a roll of blank paper with a couple of $20's on the outside to make it look like a couple thousand. (Showing the money is the first hook attempt: the man appears naive and vulnerable; some might want to take advantage and either steal the money or earn a helpers fee, some like me just want to help him not lose it. It also implies that he's not trying to steal money from you since he obviously has plenty, or at least that's how my brain worked.)
The details escape me, and this story unfolded (and was surely adapted to my vulnerabilities) throughout the con even after the 2nd guy joined in, but it was something like this: He was a sailor or something and had to get back to his ship (and this in the middle of North Texas; wtf?), but for some reason he needed to put his money in a safe place, and it wouldn't be safe if he took it with him. he And didn't trust U.S. banks. Oh yeah, he was a foreigner, too. There was probably some story about family or something that needed the money, but I don't recall exactly.
Okay, so some of this story was started, and I parked my car in the grocery lot and was following him inside (I don't recall why exactly, but it was to help him somehow; maybe to help him understand how to get a money order or something.) On the way in a second man (also black, but it doesn't matter) came out of the store and the "sailor" asked him for help, too. (I never had any clue these guys knew each other until the money was gone.)
So now from my ponit of view there was a person in need and two strangers trying to help him, and the two helpers didn't see eye-to-eye on everything.
Again, details escape me, but between the three of us we came up with that the "sailor" needed to put the money in a bank, but we had to demonstrate to him that the banks and we helpers were trustworthy. During this process the 2nd guy briefly introduced topics such as a pastor down the street and a whorehouse down the street; at the time my brain dismissed these items as completely irrelevant and I steered the discussion towards more relevant matters. (Later I realized he was trolling different possible con scenarios to see where I'd bite...so he could tell by my reactions exactly which direction in which to proceed with the con.)
I only had a few dollars which wasn't enough to demonstrate trust, but they asked if I had a paycheck to cash or something and I did; I had just been paid and hadn't cashed the check yet, but the check was at home. So they convinced me to cash the check; we all 3 got in my car and drove 2 blocks to my house; the second guy told me not to tell my Mom (I was living with Mom and told them so when they asked if I lived with someone), and stupidly I didn't mention it to her; I dutifully went in the house and got my paycheck while two con men sat in the car probably discussing strategy and contingincies.
Then we all drove to a bigger grocery store that would cash my check; this was North Texas in 1988 and on the way there was an intersection where the Ku Kux Klan were demonstrating dressed up in their sheets and waving signs. The "sailor" screamed "the killers!" and shivered in the back seat...an effective method (on me) of generating sympathy. Somehow us two "helpers" calmed him down.
One of the guys accompanied me into the grocery store where I cashed my check.
After returning to my car, the second guy, the other "helper" gave me his wallet and the "sailor" and I walked around the grocery store (out of sight from the "helper" for a few minutes) to demonstrate that the second helper trusted us. I think this was the helper's idea, and I thought it was stupid but the "sailor" seemed to like the idea and was in hook, line and sinker.
While walking around the building the "sailor" kept expressing amazement that the guy trusted us to do this.
The second demonstration of trust was that I gave them my $117 and waited for them to walk around the grocery store. After this the "sailor" would supposedly trust us enough to put his money in a safe place of our recommendation (a bank or money order...I don't recall the exact plan).
Of course you know the end of the story...I never saw them again after they rounded the corner with my $117.
What's horrible is the slow realization that you've been connned. There I was, sitting in my car alone. I had a bad feeling in my gut as soon as they rounded the corner; it briefly occured to me to drive around and check on them, but no, that would ruin everything that we'd worked on so far my brain told me. So I sat. A minute or two passed, and alone in my car I started thinking about how absurd this was, but I hadn't quite realized it was gone yet. I waited and waited and after I was convinced they had been too long I drove around the store and they were no where to be seen.
I can't tell you how humiliating it is; the worst part is realizing how obvious it was the whole time and yet my own brain seemed to be what conned me more than those two. I even realized at the time that some of the discussion was way out of left field, but I--not the scammers--was able to dismiss or rationalize it away. I went home and was in a mixed state of frustration, fury, embarrassment, etc.. I was on the verge of tears. Mom could tell something was wrong and was very worried. It was hard to speak, but I told her what happened. I don't think I told anyone else for at least a few months, and I never told anyone outside of the family until now.
Actually, I hadn't thought about it in a while. It used to be a source of internal shame for me; I suppose I'm finally "over it" after 14 or 15 years. And in retrospect I have some valuable insights out of it for a fairly cheap price. Not that I'd thank them if I ever saw them again....
Now that I think about it, these guys almost never quit talking; I think the idea was to throw too much information at me for me to stop and think about what I was doing; I was too busy rationalizing some of the information and discarding the rest as irrelevant.
These guys were small time, and in retrospect I'm possibly lucky that they didn't outright rob me or take my car, too. The car was traceable, so I suspect they just wanted the cash, and I suspect they would've robbed me in certain scenarios but I was gullible enough that they were able to walk away with the cash easily. It took me over a week to earn that money and it took them probably an hour or two to con me out of it.
You and I could point out countless errors in judgement and alternative action after reading the above scenario, but the con men are good at distraction and manipulation. I suspect there was a thrid guy who might've posed as the pastor if I had gone that route or who might've driven a getaway car at the back of the grocery store.
In reading about other scams, greed seems to be the biggest and most effective hook. Greed, religion (proving your faith through helping a brother) and good samaritanism seem to be the most common hooks. Actually sometmies I think these are combined: maybe the target wants to be a good samaritan but is also distracted by the possibility of getting a piece of the money at stake.
Distraction and confidentiality are importatnt, too. They need to keep you thinking about what YOU want out of the "deal" so you don't stop to think how absurd the situation is or ask someone else for advice. In the 419 scams the greed factor and the 'fact' that breaching confidentiality will make the deal impossible or even dangerous for the other party work to keep the target focused on money and practical details and pitfalls and a seemingly guaranteed "lottery win". I'm guessing many targets are also distracted by thinking what they're going to spend the money on.
Since my guys brought up sex and religion I suspect those are common distractions if the target indicates interest. I've heard of small time scams where "brothers" bilk a lady out of money for "tools" and such for their trade, and I read an account of someone who played the game to see what the 419 scammers would do, and that conversation went religious as the scammer claimed deep spiritual beliefs.
Sex is probably a distraction reserved for small time scams; I'm not sure how that would work in a more sophisticated scam. Actually I'm not sure how that work work small time; I suppose that might end in an outright robbery or leaving the John/target waiting for a woman (or man) in a room while the scammers take off.
I think the art of conning is to entice the target with several types of bait and then work up the story based on his preferred bait and then watch what the target does and follow; I think the con is mostly directed by the target's own expectations and rationalizations and the con men are along for the ride.
Going back to feeling sorry for these "idiots" who got scammed...I had little or no sympathy for them, either, but now I'm reconsidering that. The con is a troll for targets, for the weak or gullible, and fruequently--though not always--for the greedy. It's still hard to feel sorry for the greedy, but the gullible and well-intended get hooked, too. Once you've been hooked I think it's fairly easy for a pro to get to the sting.
Coming up with an outrageous analogy, if people were leaving bear traps (the snap-onto-your-leg kind) around, most people would be smart enough to avoid them. But there would be a small few who would be distracted or just ignorant enough to step into one. (Let's ignore kids since these types of scams we're discussing seem to be unable to target kids.) To the rest of us the traps are just an annoyance we can step around like deleting a 419 email or passing by the man selling Rolexes or whatever. Should we laugh at those who step in the bear traps and say it's their fault for being stupid and applauding Darwin selection?
Join him. The above poster didn't specify whether it was a mean, median or modal average, nor the digits of accuracy of the number 50.
My experience is that the hypothesis about stupidity is true, even for very large values of 50 (50%).
about five years ago i was walking down the street in downtown berkeley when a similar version of that scam started happening to me. . . after travelling for a few years thru mexico, central america, and western & eastern europe, i always get a bit sketched out by complete strangers who come up to me and don't ask for something outright (e.g. pen, piece of paper, spare change, cig, a light, directions). . .
.
.. i was never in any real danger as i was on a relatively busy street at dusk so i half wanted to sorta stick around to see when the scam was actually gonna kick in. . . after a while i figured that, to be safe, i oughtta just bail and then made my exit by telling the 2nd dude that he seemed to have things under control and left 'em. . .
.
.
.. then you check and make sure your credit cards and whatnot are there. . . *then* you check to see if you got all your cash back, which, of course, you don't, but by then all three of the perps have taken off. . .
.
in the berkeley scenario i forget the specifics but a dude came up and asked for help "donating" a huge wad of "cash" (probably paper with a bill on the outside) to a charity or something. . . i remember he had some sorta "official" letter of some sort stating he had to spend the money before he returned home and was absolutely adamant about not going to anything like a cop or bank. . . in fact, i think he also didn't want anything to do with white people or something too. . . anyway, after trying to help him out for a bit a 2nd dude came up and joined in on the conversation. .
when the wad of cash first made its appearance i remember alarm bells going off in my head and when the 2nd dude came up i remember thinking, "okay, this *has* to be a scam but how are they planning on taking my money?".
thing was that up until your post i couldn't figure out how the scam would've worked even if i believed 'em. . . only thing i could think of was that they'd lead me down some side street (or give me a ride in a car) and just rob me outright. .
you're right tho', getting scammed sucks, psychologically as well as monetarily. . . in europe i got taken by a scam (that's been tried on me several times since) where you're on an average sidewalk (i.e. not deserted but not totally bustling either) and a dude comes up with a map and asks for directions somewhere. . . basically what happens is you help him out (or not, if you don't know your way around) and then he gets all friendly and talkative asking where you're from and how long you're travelling and shit like that. .
well while you're distracted by talking to your new "friend", another dude in everyday street clothes walks up and says he's a cop (or secret service, control, immigration, military, whatever), flashes you some bogus ID, and demands to see your passport. . . then he demands that you empty out your pockets and acts all, y'know, gruff authoritarian cop like with the attitude that he could throw you in jail if he wanted to. . . sometimes a third dude then comes up and acts as an additional distraction and when the "cop" says you're clear and gives you back your shit in one big confused lump, the first thing you make sure you get back is your passport.
i was in prague when i fell for the scam but i've been approached like that in vienna, munich, and paris. . . to me, the scams where someone poses as a cop are always disconcerting 'cuz growing up in the US i've kinda got it ingrained into me that when someone says they're a cop and even shows you his ID, you don't just turn and walk away. . . i do it now if the cop was preceded by someone asking for directions but it still feels weird. . . it's a similar feeling to, say, the first few times you pee in your wetsuit while out surfing - it's so ingrained into your psyche to not pee in your clothes that it's hard to do at first. .
btw, in prague there *are* plainclothes "control" officers (complete with a wallet badge that looks like a toy) who check to see if you've got a ticket for the tram/bus/metro. . .