Neither shrubbery or Mardi Gras

["Sunil Ramalingam" <sunilramalingam@hotmail.com>]

I'm following up on Sue Hovey's warning about these letters, posted a few 
weeks ago.  Looks like it's a really bad idea to go to Africa to pick up the 
cash.

>Subject: SF Gate: The Nigerian E-mail Hoax/West African Scammers Take to 
>the Net
>Date: Mon, 18 Mar 2002 16:15 -0800
>
>
>
>----------------------------------------------------------------------
>This article was sent to you by someone who found it on SF Gate.
>The original article can be found on SFGate.com here:
>http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/gate/archive/2002/03/14/nigerscam.DTL
>----------------------------------------------------------------------
>Thursday, March 14, 2002 (SF Gate)
>The Nigerian E-mail Hoax/West African Scammers Take to the Net
>David Emery, Special to SF Gate
>
>
>
Mrs. Mary Mohamed urgently and confidentially needs your assistance.
Her husband, a prominent Kuwaiti citizen, was murdered by Islamic
extremists for condemning the terrorist attacks of September 11, and now, 
she says in her hastily typed e-mail, those same extremists are out to kill 
her.

The situation is desperate, but you can help. All Mohamed asks is a letter 
of invitation so she can obtain a U.S. visa and your bank-account number so 
she can move the $40 million her husband secretly bequeathed her to the 
United States. For these kindnesses, she will repay you with 15 percent of 
her fortune. Please reply to her Yahoo.com e-mail address with "your most 
confidential telephone numbers" for further instructions.

Sound like the easiest $6 million you'll ever make? Think again. According 
to the U.S. State Department, succumbing to such a plea could cost you 
everything you own, possibly even your life.

"Mrs. Mary Mohamed" is actually a professional con man -- a member, most 
likely, of one of any number of international crime rings operated by 
Nigerian nationals inside and outside their home country, where financial 
fraud has burgeoned into a multibillion-dollar industry over the past 
decade. Far from having a fortune to share with you, the perpetrators are 
after your own hard-earned cash, which they will demand in the form of 
"good-faith money" or advance fees to secure the release of the supposedly 
sequestered funds. And they will go to almost any lengths to get it.

Known to law enforcement as the "Nigerian Advance-Fee Fraud" or "419 Scam" 
("419" being the applicable section of the country's criminal code), the 
Secret Service terms the phenomenon a "growing epidemic," and according to 
the Postal Service, it is accountable for losses of more than $100 million a 
year to American citizens alone. There are countless variants, but the 
opening play is always the same: a "confidential" message purporting to come 
from a high government official, businessman or other VIP, followed by 
elaborate "proofs" of legitimacy calculated to gain victims' confidence and 
part them from their money. Individual losses to U.S. citizens have ranged 
from a few thousand dollars to a million bucks.

Victims -- particularly those naive enough to travel to Africa to consummate 
such deals or try to recover their losses -- also report being subjected to 
extortion attempts, intimidation and violence at the hands of 419 scammers 
says the Secret Service agent I spoke with (who asked not to be named). Just 
last December, the Helsinki newspaper "Helsingin Sanomat" reported that a 
Finnish businessman was kidnapped, beaten and held for ransom by a Nigerian 
crime ring operating in South Africa after they had already bilked him of 
hundreds of thousands of dollars in "advance fees." At least 15 people are 
known to have been murdered in connection with these scams since the early 
1990s.

It may seem unlikely that anyone would actually fall for such schemes, but 
according to the Secret Service official, about 1 percent of those>solicited 
do. The reasons are mainly psychological. For one, practitioners of 
advance-fee fraud, like all con artists, can be extraordinarily persuasive 
and persistent. But criminologists say the victims, too, share certain 
personality traits that increase their susceptibility. Greed and gullibility 
obviously figure in, as do such tendencies as being a risk taker, succumbing 
easily to flattery or intimidation and failing to take an interest in news 
and current events. Sometimes the victims have a criminal bent themselves.

Demographics play no role at all, said the same official. Unlike other
types of fraud, in which perpetrators target particular groups such as the 
elderly or the well-to-do, 419 scammers take a scattershot approach, 
soliciting anyone and everyone.

The Internet has exacerbated the problem. "Nigerian Money Offers" zoomed 
from the seventh to the third most common type of online fraud last year 
according to the Web site Internet Fraud Watch, and the reason is obvious. 
In days gone by, the scammers had to canvass potential victims one at a time 
by fax and snail mail; now they have the speed, cost-effectiveness and 
anonymity of the Internet at their disposal, and they're taking full 
advantage. They ply their trade in Internet cafés, switching 
identities with the click of a button using easily obtainable Web e-mail 
accounts and spamming their elaborate come-ons to thousands of harvested 
e-mail addresses at once. Though only a tiny percentage of recipients reply, 
in doing so they identify themselves as easy marks, inviting further contact 
and the inevitable pressure tactics from the e-grifters.

The Secret Service Web site says the agency has drastically stepped up its 
efforts to apprehend and prosecute 419 scammers in recent years -- even to 
the extent of establishing a presence in Nigeria itself -- but its increased 
successes have been counterbalanced by an explosion in the rate of new 
cases. The obstacles to fighting the scam are many, says the agent I spoke 
with, not least the reluctance of embarrassed and fearful victims to come 
forward and press charges. Also hampering enforcement efforts are the 
dispersion of the crime rings to far-flung countries and their increasing 
reliance on the Internet. While prosecutions remain infrequent as compared 
to the number of reported crimes, the Secret Service touts a higher success 
rate now than at any time in the past, mainly due to the cooperative efforts 
of law-enforcement agencies internationally, including the Nigerian national 
police force.

Still, officials place their main emphasis on prevention, through
increased public awareness and education. The State Department, the Secret 
Service, the Federal Trade Commission and the FBI all maintain
informational Web pages devoted specifically to 419 fraud.

What should you do if you receive an e-mail you suspect is a scam? First, 
and most important, do not reply to it. Simply delete the message -- or, 
alternatively, contribute it to the Secret Service's database by forwarding 
it to 419.fcd@usss.treas.gov -- then delete it.

If you're unsure whether a message you've received is a scam, here are a few 
dead giveaways. The message:

* has a header that reads "URGENT AND CONFIDENTIAL" or "BUSINESS PROPOSAL"or 
"URGENT ASSISTANCE," etc.

* purports to originate from a high government official, oil executive or 
banker (or relative of same) in a foreign country.
* promises a substantial percentage of a huge sum of money.
* requests personal information such as your address, telephone number or 
bank-account data.
* sounds too good to be true.

If you have already been victimized and have suffered a financial loss at 
the hands of 419 scammers, contact the Secret Service immediately, advises 
the U.S. Commerce Department's Nigeria officer (who asked not to be named). 
You can find the number of the field office nearest you by checking the 
government pages of your telephone book.

The Commerce official also advises taking immediate steps to prevent the 
scammers from taking further advantage of you: "Carefully review any 
personal information you've given them. Change bank-account numbers, phone 
numbers -- anything they may have had access to."

One thing you should not do is expect to ever see your money again.
>Recoveries are even rarer than prosecutions. "In four years, I've never 
>seen it happen," says the official, who listens to victims' horror stories 
>daily.

But for those who've been taken in by the 419 scam, there is one small
solace: At least you know you're not alone.
>
> 
>
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>Copyright 2002 SF Gate
>




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