Scientific and other articles by third parties related to Advance Fee Fraud/419-scam

[Rob]

The following documents are either focused on fraud in Africa/African regions in general or specifically onto the advance fee fraud and/or cybercrime. However, these articles are only a selection of texts that are publicly available on the internet. Visitors are encouraged to make suggestions for other articles that could be mentioned.

[Rob]

Glickman, H.(2004): "The Nigerian “419" Advance Fee Scams: Prank or Peril?"
The main part of the article is available here: http://www.haverford.edu/pols/faculty/glickman/Articles/CJAS_Text_final_1-35.pdf(pdf, 120 kb, 33 pages).
All other parts, including appendix, bibliography, etc. can be downloaded seperately here: http://www.haverford.edu/pols/faculty/glickman/Articles/

Mr. Glickman is a politics scientist and Professor Emeritus at Haverford College.

From the abstract:
More than two decades of offers to get rich quick by transferring a
percentage of ill-gotten, windfall funds, frozen in accounts in West African banks or safe houses, have filled the snail mail, fax and e-mail in-boxes of hundreds of thousands of persons around the world. Not everyone trashes them; estimates vary, but perhaps billions of dollars have been transferred from sometimes sympathetic, but always gullible and often greedy victims to African criminal groups, whose ‘foot soldiers' are mostly young and mostly Nigerian. U.S. citizens alone reportedly lose annually an amount equal to two and a half times the total value of yearly U.S. exports to Nigeria. An unknown number of persons, in the scores, African and non-African, have been maimed and murdered. This paper describes the nature of these e-mail advance fee fraud and allied schemes, discusses why they persist, assesses the damaging effects on victims in Nigeria and outside, reviews counter-actions helpful to Africans and others, and suggests broad and possibly perilous global implications.

[Rob]

United Nations Economic and Social Council. Commission on Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice. (2001). Conclusions of the Study on effective measures to prevent and control high-technology and computer-related crime. Report of the Secretary-General. Published by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNDOC).

The article is part of a series of documents that resulted out of the 10th Session of the Commission on Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice, 8-17 May 2001,Vienna, Austria. http://www.unodc.org/pdf/crime/10_commission/4e.pdf (pdf-file, 147kb, 20 pages).
It is also available in the other official UN-languages here (under E/CN.15/2001/4): http://www.unodc.org/unodc/crime_cicp_commission_session_10.html

From the summary:

The present report responds, in part, to the request of the Economic and Social Council, in its resolution 199/23 of 28 July 1999, that the Secretary-General conduct a study on effective measures that could be taken at the national and international levels to prevent and control computer-related crime. It provides a preliminaryexamination of the subject and recommends that a more detailed study be undertaken and submitted for consideration by the Commission on Crime Prevention andCriminal Justice at its eleventh session as a matter of high priority. It furtherrecommends that the Commission at its eleventh session consider a series of options for further action, including the possible drafting of an international instrument against computer-related crime and options for a shorter-term strategy, including the establishment of a United Nations global programme against high-technology and computer-related crime. It also provides information about the activities of other relevant international and intergovernmental organizations and seeks to respond to some of the concerns raised by individual Member States.

[Rob]

United Nations Office of Drugs and Crime (2005): Crime and Development in Africa. http://www.unodc.org/pdf/African_report.pdf (pdf-file, 3,5MB, 161 pages).
The article explains roughly the current state of Crime in Africa, why and how it hinders Africas development and it finally gives examples about possible counterstrategies. A very basic summary can be found here: http://www.unodc.org/newsletter/200503/page005.html
While the Advance Fee Fraud is mentioned just once (p.41), it mentions other perspectives that may explain the development and the future of this Cybercrime.

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
This Report does not attempt to explain why Africa suffers from crime or under-development
– such a project could easily fill many volumes. It does not argue that under-development or
poverty cause crime, nor that development alone can resolve crime problems in Africa. Rather,
it focuses on establishing two simple points:
• All available evidence suggests that Africa has a serious crime problem (Chapter One).
• There is good reason to believe that this crime problem is undermining development
efforts (Chapter Two).
The intent of this Report is to make the case for including crime prevention in development
planning, as discussed in Chapter Three.

[Rob]

Buchanan, J.; Grant, A.J. .(2001): Investigating and Prosecuting Nigerian Fraud. In: The United States Attorneys Bulletin.6, 2001 (49), p.39-47http://www.usdoj.gov/usao/eousa/foia_reading_room/usab4906.pdf (pdf, 942kb, 54 pages).

[Rob]

United States Department of State. Bureau of International Narcotics and
Law Enforcement Affairs (1997). Nigerian Advance Fee Fraud. http://www.state.gov/documents/organization/2189.pdf (pdf-file, 1MB, 33 pages).
This article is divided into three parts. The first two explain the size of the fraud , its various types and how it works. The third describes shortly general government strategies to combat the crime as well as a recommendation for consumers.

[Rob]

Peel, M. (2006): Nigeria-related financial crime and its links with britain. An Africa Programme Report.Chatham House. http://www.chathamhouse.org.uk/publications/papers/download/-/id/410/file/4043_nigeria1106.pdf (pdf-file, 300kb, 65 pages).
This link gives a short overview: http://www.which.co.uk/reports_and_campaigns/consumer_rights/reports/legal_advice_from_which/Nigerian_finance_scams_news_article_557_100360.jsp

The author is a journalist and was for three years based in Lagos as the West-Africa correspondent for the Financial Times. He was afterwards an associate fellow of Chatham House.

This article is highly recommended for all interested readers. It is the newest summary about this topic, it is well researched, comprehensive but still fairly easy to read.

[Rob]

Reich, P.C.(2004): Cybercrime. Advance Fee Scams In-Country and Across Borders http://www.aic.gov.au/conferences/2004/reich.pdf (pdf-file, 490 kb, 79 pages).
This text gives (similar to P.Glickmann's article above) a brief introduction to the the advance fee fraud, its various tactics and "formats", shows exemplarily a few case-studies including email-conversations, statistics and examples of investigations and prosecutions.

[Rob]

Smith, R.G., Holmes M. N., Kaufmann, P.(1999): Nigerian Advance Fee
Fraud. In: Trends & Issues in crime and criminal justice (121). Australian Institute of Criminology. http://www.aic.gov.au/publications/tandi/ti121.pdf (pdf-file, 100kb, 6 pages).


From the abstract:
Throughout history, enterprising if unscrupulous individuals have devised new ways of tricking gullible people into parting with their money. Without in any way impugning the integrity and honesty of the vast majority of Nigerians, this paper examines one of the most recent examples of deceptive conduct that has emerged internationally and has been carried out on a wide scale by a group of primarily Nigerian nationals. It involves a variant of the traditional “advance fee� scheme and has been used to defraud anyone in the world who is willing to succumb to the temptation offered to make some “quick money�. It has been estimated that some US$5 billion has been stolen worldwide through the use of these schemes over the past decade.

This paper examines the nature of this phenomenon and investigates the
way in which its occurrence has escalated, not only in frequency, but also with respect to the seriousness and nature of the criminality involved. It also
examines the reasons behind the development of this phenomenon and how
traditional law enforcement measures have been of limited effectiveness in
controlling it. In the end, one can only wonder at the greed and stupidity of
people prepared to part with money in response to an unsolicited letter,
offering them millions of dollars, from a stranger on the other side of the world.

[Rob]

Künzler, D. (2007): Who wants to be a millionaire? Global capitalism and fraud in Nigeria. Presentation at the Interim Conference of Research Committee 02 of the International Sociological Association. World Social Forum, Nairobi, January 22, 2007 http://www.suz.uzh.ch/kuenzler/grey/419Nairobi.pdf (pdf, 79kb).

from the introduction:
How is this kind of fraud related to global capitalism? This article aims to reveal three kinds
of links. First, this kind of fraud is booming as a consequence of the financial crisis in Nigeria
after the oil-boom, as a review of the history of advanced fee frauds shows. Second, the
fraudsters are using the infrastructure of global capitalism and have intimate knowledge of
modern communication technologies, as an overview of some patterns of fraud shows.
Thirdly, as a result of the financial crisis and structural adjustments in Nigeria, the
conventional way of social mobility by education was blocked. As a consequence, young
Africans are looking for new images of success, fraudsters being among them in the case of
Nigeria. There is an ambivalent approach to fraud, combining admiration and envy with
despite and decrial. Some of this ambivalence is manifest also in Nigerian popular culture, as
an analysis of some Nigerian videos and Hip Hop productions show. This article draws on
disperse academic and non-academic sources in different languages and on an analysis of
videos and music as well as on the authors experience with popular cultures in Nigeria.

[Rob]

Yomi Tanfa, D. (2006): Advance Fee Fraud. University of South Africa.http://etd.unisa.ac.za/ETD-db/theses/available/etd-09272006-115222/unrestricted/thesis.pdf (pdf, 842 kb)

While the article simply claims to be an introduction into the advance fee fraud, it is interesting as it also tries to shed a (sadly very brief) light onto the motivations of the scammers via interviews and it also gives recommendations for prevention.

[Rob]

Ndijo, Basile (2008): Cameroonian feymen and Nigerian ‘419’ scammers: Two examples of Africa’s ‘reinvention’ of the global capitalism. ASC Working Paper 81 / 2008. Leiden University. https://openaccess.leidenuniv.nl/bitstream/1887/13016/2/ASC-075287668-263-01.pdf