Scam Watch

The Nigerian scam, also known as a 419 or advanced fee fraud, is one of the most prevalent types of scams floating around on the Internet. The Nigerian scam involves a victim being sent a correspondence promising him a substantial amount of money in exchange for helping the sender out of a legal problem or an embarrassment. The letter usually involves transferring the sender’s personal treasure, funds or sums of money (in the multi-million or billion dollar sum) overseas. The victim is then promised a certain percentage of the funds as a form of gratitude.

The scam initially seems like a good deal since the victim doesn’t have to give his overseas benefactors any amount of money. He stands to lose nothing except some time if the deal doesn’t turn out as expected. HOWEVER, once a feeling of trust and complacency has been instilled in the victim, the perpetrators of the scam start delaying the paperwork. Various excuses will be made, with their government officials asking some questions and need to be bribed, paperwork that requires some filing fees, or some extra people needing money to perform the clerical tasks and documentation on their side – the scammers will start requesting for financial assistance. The amount they ask for is usually substantial but made to look light in comparison to the promised rewards. To further convince the victim of their good intentions, the scammers will even offer to reimburse the total costs accrued in addition to the percentage the victim was already bound to receive. Utterly convinced, the victim then starts to wire funds to his overseas “friends”. In some cases, the scammers even convince the victim to give them his bank account details.

From this point on, there are two ways this scenario can end. In most common cases, the victim never hears from the scammers again and all the money he has spent is never returned.

In worst case scenarios, where the scammer has convinced the victim to give out his bank account information, it turns into an identity theft case as the scammers start using the bank account and the owner’s info in various other scams, using his account to launder money scammed from other people to create a complicated web of chicanery that can be very hard to trace back to the original perpetrators. This is very dangerous since not only has the victim given the scammers the equivalent of a signed blank check, the use of his bank account usually results in various government agencies flagging the victim as one of the suspects, as they try to crack down on the scammers.

Surprisingly enough, even though the Nigerian scam (which got its name from the fact that the first few perpetrators originated from Nigeria) is very famous and has victimized a lot of people, it is quite easy to avoid. The only thing that gets people scammed is their own greed. In fact, a lot of scams are easy to avoid or prevent, and they only work because people tend to disregard common sense when blinded by promises of large fortunes or opportunities for becoming filthy rich without any hard or time-consuming work done on their part. In order to prevent most scams from actually working, people need to think more and avoid being slaves to two things: Greed and Laziness.