John Fairheart
16 August 2006, 15:13
Story Here (http://allafrica.com/stories/200608140735.html)
Nigeria: 419 Scams - Setting the Records Straight (ii)
By Farooq A. Kperogi
August 14, 2006
One of the respondents to my column made the point that 419 frauds predate 1914 when the Southern and Northern protectorates were formally merged to give birth to Nigeria. That's partly true. Nigerians are not the progenitors of advance fee fraud. Spaniards are. Nigerians only advanced the viciousness of the fraud, as will be shown shortly.
It is now customary, especially in America and Europe, to associate advance fee fraud with the Internet and Nigeria. This is also inaccurate. Advance fee frauds not only predate the Internet; they antecede the birth of Nigeria. As I said earlier, advance fee frauds actually started in Spain. Originally referred to as the "Spanish Prisoner Letter," the scam has been historically perpetrated through ordinary postal mail. In its erstwhile form, rich businessmen were contacted by an unknown person who usually falsely asserted to be a prison chaplain. The scammer would claim to be part of an effort to save the sheltered but endangered child of an estate-owning, incarcerated family member who is reputedly dying as a result of the harsh conditions of a Spanish prison.
The senders of the letters would solicit the financial assistance of the recipient of the letter either to free the child or the parent in return for a financial reward several fold their initial investment, along with a promise of marriage to the distressed wealthy prisoner's beautiful daughter at the conclusion of the deal. It was often claimed that the putative rich prisoner could not disclose his identity without grim consequences and was therefore relying on the sender of the mail to raise money to arrange for his escape from prison.
Compassion, greed, and lust would usually strangely intermix to attract and sustain the interest of the merchants in the deal. Invariably, the first rescue attempt usually failed. What was initially an innocent, modest financial request for help in a "charitable" cause would morph into a more elaborate scheme that would require the businessman to travel to Spain. As soon as the dupe made the initial deposit, he would be told that unforeseen snags had arisen that required more money to fix, until the dupe was rendered bankrupt and the game ended.
Central characteristics of the Spanish Prisoner are its excessive obsession with emphasizing the secrecy of the deal and the trust the confidence artist is reposing in the prey not to reveal the prisoner's identity, location, or conditions. The scammer often claimed to have carefully chosen the prey based on the laudatory estimation the prey had from his peers for truthfulness and probity. Subsequently, the deal would be arranged to appear as if the scammer's ultimate share of the reward was bestowed at the discretion and benevolence of the prey.
It is an ironic twist of history that the Spanish Prisoner Letter was so pervasive that in 1914, the year Nigeria was formally born, the British ambassador to Spain wrote to British colonial officers in Nigeria to be wary of the swindle and to warn the people of Nigeria to keep their guard against it. The Nigerian Customs and Trade Journal of April 1914 reproduced the letter by the British ambassador to Spain, Arthur Hardinge, calling attention to "the Spanish Prisoner swindle... established in Madrid and other Spanish towns [and] assisted by accomplices in England." The letter added: "It appears that perpetrators of this fraud are still endeavouring to victimise residents of the British Colonies and it is considered advisable that the public in Nigeria should be warned to be upon their guard."
It would turn out that several decades after this warning, Nigerians would adopt, adapt, and perfect this fraud and even use it to torment the Spanish who "invented" it. It is conceivable, however, that the emergence of the Nigerian version of the time-honored scam is consequent upon the contact that citizens of the country had with British colonial rule, more so that the letter of the British ambassador to Spain made reference to "accomplices in England" with whom some Nigerians might have had reasons to interact. However, even if this speculation were proven true, it still leaves unresolved the mystery that, among all citizens of former British colonies in Africa and other parts of the world, Nigerians of a specific ethnic extraction are dominant in this confidence trickery. This cultural dimension of the 419 phenomenon has never been explored in any scholarly or popular accounts of the origins of the scam.
What, then, is this so-called Nigerian 419 email scam? And how is its manifestation reminiscent of the Spanish Prisoner swindle? Perhaps the best operational definition that encapsulates 419's robustly variegated dimensions is the one provided by the (American) National White Collar Crime Center.
It defined 419 as "a correspondence outlining an opportunity to receive non-existent government funds from alleged dignitaries that is designed to collect advance fees from the victims. This sometimes requires payoff money to bribe government officials. While other countries may be mentioned, the correspondence typically indicates 'The Government of Nigeria' as the nation of origin. This scam...is also referred to as '419 Fraud' after the relevant section of the Criminal Code of Nigeria, as well as, Advance Fee Fraud."
These unsolicited e-mails usually originate from Africa, mostly from Nigeria, but lately are springing forth from other parts of the world as well. Their trademark is their universal claim that colossal amounts of money are in an African country either on account of the supposed death of some African dictator or of some foreign national who had a bank account in an African country and had no next of kin to claim his money. The sender of the e-mail typically requests the recipient's help in transferring the money to the recipient's bank and, in turn, promises a huge reward (usually between 30 and 40 percent of the total money, which usually runs into millions of dollars) for this seemingly effortless assistance.
The scammers lend credibility to their fraud by claiming to be either high-ranking bureaucrats who are intent on cheating their governments but hamstrung by a Nigerian constitutional provision that forbids public officers from having foreign accounts, or they can pretend to be children or spouses of a well-known late African dictator such as Abacha, Mobutu, and so on. They claim that they can neither keep their late dictator father's loot, nor transfer it to a foreign account by themselves because a new, hostile regime is on the hunt for them. At this juncture, the prey is hooked.
But, at the last minute, the victim is told that unanticipated bottlenecks have mired the transaction, and money is needed to either pay some administrative fees, unforeseen taxes, or to bribe a disobliging government official to facilitate the release of the millions of dollars. Already whetted by the anticipation of imminent wealth, victims dig into their own pockets to advance the process, figuring that their near-term inconvenience is insignificant in comparison to the millions to come.
Devious perpetrators rely upon the alluring outcome of this risk/reward calculation, knowing full well that the promise of an easy windfall will frequently outweigh the otherwise nonsensical notion of transferring thousands to a stranger in cyberspace. Hopeful euphoria is soon replaced by the harsh reality of being scammed, as preys opting for risk soon discover their monies are forever lost.
The scammers have an amazingly robust assortment of ploys in their criminally persuasive repertoire. Scams can take the form of "donations" to charities, academic institutions, religious groups, or other non-profit organizations bequeathed from the "wills" of some dead millionaire Nigerian, but the prospective beneficiaries of these so-called donations are asked to pay an "inheritance tax" on them. The U. S. State Department made public the case of one church in Texas that was fleeced up to $80,000 when it was told that a wealthy Nigerian benefactor had left millions of dollars to the church. But the bearer of the good tidings said a few financial details needed to be straightened up before the money could be released. The church ended up being sucked in an elaborate confidence game. Many Muslim organizations have also fallen victim to this kind of ploy.
The sender of a scam e-mail can also purport to be an exalted bureaucrat in an African country who is fleeing his country as a result of political persecution. Consequently, he asks his victims to advance kickbacks in return for a generous cut of the material possessions he has supposedly stashed in some Western country. Other insidious pleas take the form of requests to transfer money from over-invoiced contracts, "inside" deals on crude oil sales, currency conversion, or request to serve as a conduit for the purchase of a real estate in the victim's country. Now, the form and content of the scams are taking more vicious, difficult-to-detect dimensions. But no matter the form, each get-rich-quick temptation unmercifully debilitates its victim's finances in the end.
Nigeria: 419 Scams - Setting the Records Straight (ii)
By Farooq A. Kperogi
August 14, 2006
One of the respondents to my column made the point that 419 frauds predate 1914 when the Southern and Northern protectorates were formally merged to give birth to Nigeria. That's partly true. Nigerians are not the progenitors of advance fee fraud. Spaniards are. Nigerians only advanced the viciousness of the fraud, as will be shown shortly.
It is now customary, especially in America and Europe, to associate advance fee fraud with the Internet and Nigeria. This is also inaccurate. Advance fee frauds not only predate the Internet; they antecede the birth of Nigeria. As I said earlier, advance fee frauds actually started in Spain. Originally referred to as the "Spanish Prisoner Letter," the scam has been historically perpetrated through ordinary postal mail. In its erstwhile form, rich businessmen were contacted by an unknown person who usually falsely asserted to be a prison chaplain. The scammer would claim to be part of an effort to save the sheltered but endangered child of an estate-owning, incarcerated family member who is reputedly dying as a result of the harsh conditions of a Spanish prison.
The senders of the letters would solicit the financial assistance of the recipient of the letter either to free the child or the parent in return for a financial reward several fold their initial investment, along with a promise of marriage to the distressed wealthy prisoner's beautiful daughter at the conclusion of the deal. It was often claimed that the putative rich prisoner could not disclose his identity without grim consequences and was therefore relying on the sender of the mail to raise money to arrange for his escape from prison.
Compassion, greed, and lust would usually strangely intermix to attract and sustain the interest of the merchants in the deal. Invariably, the first rescue attempt usually failed. What was initially an innocent, modest financial request for help in a "charitable" cause would morph into a more elaborate scheme that would require the businessman to travel to Spain. As soon as the dupe made the initial deposit, he would be told that unforeseen snags had arisen that required more money to fix, until the dupe was rendered bankrupt and the game ended.
Central characteristics of the Spanish Prisoner are its excessive obsession with emphasizing the secrecy of the deal and the trust the confidence artist is reposing in the prey not to reveal the prisoner's identity, location, or conditions. The scammer often claimed to have carefully chosen the prey based on the laudatory estimation the prey had from his peers for truthfulness and probity. Subsequently, the deal would be arranged to appear as if the scammer's ultimate share of the reward was bestowed at the discretion and benevolence of the prey.
It is an ironic twist of history that the Spanish Prisoner Letter was so pervasive that in 1914, the year Nigeria was formally born, the British ambassador to Spain wrote to British colonial officers in Nigeria to be wary of the swindle and to warn the people of Nigeria to keep their guard against it. The Nigerian Customs and Trade Journal of April 1914 reproduced the letter by the British ambassador to Spain, Arthur Hardinge, calling attention to "the Spanish Prisoner swindle... established in Madrid and other Spanish towns [and] assisted by accomplices in England." The letter added: "It appears that perpetrators of this fraud are still endeavouring to victimise residents of the British Colonies and it is considered advisable that the public in Nigeria should be warned to be upon their guard."
It would turn out that several decades after this warning, Nigerians would adopt, adapt, and perfect this fraud and even use it to torment the Spanish who "invented" it. It is conceivable, however, that the emergence of the Nigerian version of the time-honored scam is consequent upon the contact that citizens of the country had with British colonial rule, more so that the letter of the British ambassador to Spain made reference to "accomplices in England" with whom some Nigerians might have had reasons to interact. However, even if this speculation were proven true, it still leaves unresolved the mystery that, among all citizens of former British colonies in Africa and other parts of the world, Nigerians of a specific ethnic extraction are dominant in this confidence trickery. This cultural dimension of the 419 phenomenon has never been explored in any scholarly or popular accounts of the origins of the scam.
What, then, is this so-called Nigerian 419 email scam? And how is its manifestation reminiscent of the Spanish Prisoner swindle? Perhaps the best operational definition that encapsulates 419's robustly variegated dimensions is the one provided by the (American) National White Collar Crime Center.
It defined 419 as "a correspondence outlining an opportunity to receive non-existent government funds from alleged dignitaries that is designed to collect advance fees from the victims. This sometimes requires payoff money to bribe government officials. While other countries may be mentioned, the correspondence typically indicates 'The Government of Nigeria' as the nation of origin. This scam...is also referred to as '419 Fraud' after the relevant section of the Criminal Code of Nigeria, as well as, Advance Fee Fraud."
These unsolicited e-mails usually originate from Africa, mostly from Nigeria, but lately are springing forth from other parts of the world as well. Their trademark is their universal claim that colossal amounts of money are in an African country either on account of the supposed death of some African dictator or of some foreign national who had a bank account in an African country and had no next of kin to claim his money. The sender of the e-mail typically requests the recipient's help in transferring the money to the recipient's bank and, in turn, promises a huge reward (usually between 30 and 40 percent of the total money, which usually runs into millions of dollars) for this seemingly effortless assistance.
The scammers lend credibility to their fraud by claiming to be either high-ranking bureaucrats who are intent on cheating their governments but hamstrung by a Nigerian constitutional provision that forbids public officers from having foreign accounts, or they can pretend to be children or spouses of a well-known late African dictator such as Abacha, Mobutu, and so on. They claim that they can neither keep their late dictator father's loot, nor transfer it to a foreign account by themselves because a new, hostile regime is on the hunt for them. At this juncture, the prey is hooked.
But, at the last minute, the victim is told that unanticipated bottlenecks have mired the transaction, and money is needed to either pay some administrative fees, unforeseen taxes, or to bribe a disobliging government official to facilitate the release of the millions of dollars. Already whetted by the anticipation of imminent wealth, victims dig into their own pockets to advance the process, figuring that their near-term inconvenience is insignificant in comparison to the millions to come.
Devious perpetrators rely upon the alluring outcome of this risk/reward calculation, knowing full well that the promise of an easy windfall will frequently outweigh the otherwise nonsensical notion of transferring thousands to a stranger in cyberspace. Hopeful euphoria is soon replaced by the harsh reality of being scammed, as preys opting for risk soon discover their monies are forever lost.
The scammers have an amazingly robust assortment of ploys in their criminally persuasive repertoire. Scams can take the form of "donations" to charities, academic institutions, religious groups, or other non-profit organizations bequeathed from the "wills" of some dead millionaire Nigerian, but the prospective beneficiaries of these so-called donations are asked to pay an "inheritance tax" on them. The U. S. State Department made public the case of one church in Texas that was fleeced up to $80,000 when it was told that a wealthy Nigerian benefactor had left millions of dollars to the church. But the bearer of the good tidings said a few financial details needed to be straightened up before the money could be released. The church ended up being sucked in an elaborate confidence game. Many Muslim organizations have also fallen victim to this kind of ploy.
The sender of a scam e-mail can also purport to be an exalted bureaucrat in an African country who is fleeing his country as a result of political persecution. Consequently, he asks his victims to advance kickbacks in return for a generous cut of the material possessions he has supposedly stashed in some Western country. Other insidious pleas take the form of requests to transfer money from over-invoiced contracts, "inside" deals on crude oil sales, currency conversion, or request to serve as a conduit for the purchase of a real estate in the victim's country. Now, the form and content of the scams are taking more vicious, difficult-to-detect dimensions. But no matter the form, each get-rich-quick temptation unmercifully debilitates its victim's finances in the end.