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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."
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
#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.
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.
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?
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".