Slashdot Mirror
Jail 'Greedy' Scam Victims, Says Nigerian Diplomat
AcidAUS writes with this nearly unbelievable snippet from today's Sydney Morning Herald: "The Nigerian high commissioner in Australia says people who are ripped off by so-called Nigerian scams are just as guilty as the fraudsters and should be jailed. Responding to a story in yesterday's Herald, which revealed Australians lose at least $36 million a year to the online scams, Sunday Olu Agbi said Australians had failed to heed repeated warnings not to deal with shady characters on the internet."
http://www.419eater.com
Since the summary doesn't make this clear and I'm sure plenty of people won't RTFA, the good professor is referring to jailing those people who fall for scams in which they believe they are aiding embezzlers in order to get rich. It'll never happen of course, but it's not that unreasonable either really.
Somehow being a greedy criminal is OK as long as you're dumb enough to wind up as the victim in the attempt.
Spelling mistakes, grammatical errors, and stupid comments are intentional.
This is simply an argument to try to divert blame. I don't really care that the other side is a willing victim. Fraud is fraud, and I have a hard time believing that the Nigerian goverment is really doing all that much about it. Nigeria is a Kleptocracy, so corruption is endemic in the society. I'm sure a few well placed bribes keeps the cops away. It's not really that hard to find these guys after all since the money eventually has to go somewhere.
AccountKiller
I think the actual quote is "You can cheat a honest man, but not make a fool out of him."
#1) A $3500 cheque with your name on it arrives in the mail. That evening you receive a phone call saying that it was an accident and could you wire back the money, but you can keep $500 for your troubles. So you deposit the cheque and wait a week for it to clear and then send $3000 to the scammer. When a cheque has "cleared" (when money appears in your account) it's not necessarily all done and legit -- the bank can revoke that money for weeks after. So 3 weeks later the bank realises that the cheque was illegitimate and they pull $3500 out of your account so you're down $3000 which has gone to the scammer.
#2) Door to door people from the gas company asking to see gas bills because of a printing error. They might have id and a clipboard and a nice tie, and they might have gotten your name from letters in your letter box. They take down some notes about the bill and perhaps even ask you for id and later they perform some identity theft crime.
Just so that I don't make people paranoid here's how to respond to these two scenarios:
Re #1) Don't deposit or cash the cheque. You may be stung by the bank for fees related to the illegitimate cheque.
Re #2) You should respond to these people to verify who they are by phoning the gas company. Alternatively say that you're going to get the bill and tell them to wait at the door as you close it in their face and go crack open a beer.
I'm pretty sure that Nigerian scams [and its variants] existed before 1992.
The internet just made it a lot more visible.
This is true. In fact, it was a pretty common fax-scam in the 80's - and probably came in many other forms too.
That's certainly how they started, and most of the unlikely stories are still structured as embezzlement, but there are a few that *could* appear to be legal if you're naive enough (and anyone falling for the scam IS).
Then, there's the spam I got the other day claiming to be from the FBI. It claimed that they were aware of my pending transaction and that their investigations had found it to be perfectly legal and legitimate. If you're naive enough to believe the crazy scam in the first place, you'll likely think the follow-up actually came from the FBI as well.
Another largish chunk make it look like they need your help to scam a bank before it confiscates someone's inheritance. While that's not exactly legal, neither is what they claim that the bank will do otherwise. If you somehow manage to take the story at face value, the victim could believe that they are bending the rules a bit to prevent a much larger injustice.
In those cases, it *IS* close to unbelievable that a diplomat from the country that does nothing to control the rampant fraud would dare to blame the victim. The fraud is so prevalent that for many fraud and Nigeria have become synonymous.
Then, of course, there's the death threat extortions. Does he think those are the victim's fault as well?
While I agree that this is perpetrated by a small percentage of the population, and I can sympathize with all Nigerians who get painted with the same brush as the frauds, his statement wasn't very diplomatic to say the least. Perhaps a more constructive approach would be to ask for assistance in tracking down the scammers.
There is a huge difference in helping out someone at payday and helping a suspected criminal bypass the law. If one of those check cashing operations was helping the Mob handle their transactions they'd get stung for money laundering.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
Nice one ;) ;)
Some corrections for you though, so that next time you can REALLY sound like an Aussie.
* Obviously you quite tastefully combined the "dingo ate my baby" and "shrimp on the barbie", but I'll point out that most Australians call it a "prawn", and I personally don't know ANYONE who barbecues them.
* Australians drink lager cold (except the weird ones...) I believe the stereotype is that the British drink it warm, but I don't know if that's true. One of my Brit friends told me it was "bollocks".
* Australians (for the most part) follow British English conventions, so it's "cheque", not "check".
The rest is bonza
Homonyms are fun!
You're driving your car, but they're riding their bikes there.
A VB mate, Victoria Bitter.
Known just by it's colour up north, as in 'I'll have a slab of green tins mate'.
Fosters is a rarity in Australia, I think its made overseas more than in Oz.
But I'd prefer a Coopers.
That's the thing though, even after it's cashed it can be withdrawn when the bank realises what's going on (which can be weeks later).
In the US it was "only" 0.7% in 2003 according to http://salt.claretianpubs.org/sjnews/2003/04/sjn0304f.html [claretianpubs.org]. But hey that makes 2 million people. Wonder how the rest of the developed world is doing?
Already in the 80's, with fax machines instead of the internet.
British don't drink lager warm. But ale is drunk at the temperature it comes up from the cellar, which is warmer than lager typically is. But then again, lager is served ice cold so you can't actually taste it, because let's face it, most mass produced lagers are pretty rank.
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
America got the criminals too. Mostly in the Virginia and Georgia colonies. You obviously didn't get enough of them.
In one version, the scammer poses as a government worker who has embezzled millions of dollars and is offering victims a percentage if they help retrieve the money by providing a relatively small amount of money for bribes or other charges. Professor Olu Agbi said "greedy" Australians who tried to partake in these crimes - even though they are scams - should be arrested as well.
In this context I'd agree with him. They got what they deserved. But of course these are only a subset of all of the nigerian scams out there.
Most Nigerian 419 scams are a variant of a much older scam known as the Spanish Prisoner. It dates back to the early 1900s.
One of our competitors trademarked the term "hypothesis". From now on, we will call them "boneheaded ideas".
VB is truly shit - I mean piss. You're better off with a Coopers for sure.
you had me at #!