419 Fraud, A Brief Description

[Crux Polaris]

419 Fraud: a brief description.

Aliases:
Advance Fee Fraud
Nigerian Fraud
Nigerian Scam
(Nigerian) Money Transfer Fraud

Definitions:

Scam: A criminal (illegal) act or plot devised to steal money or posessions from a victim. A scam falls under the wider category of Fraud, though these two terms are used interchangeably on this site.

Scam artist (“scammer”): The criminal wholly or partially responsible for the undertaking of a scam.

419: The number 419 is used when addressing Advance Fee Fraud because of the reference to the Nigerian Criminal Code. This type of economic crime is listed under code 419.


How the scam operates:

Initially, an “investor” or “partner” is contacted by the scam artist with a plea for help in the transfer of a sum of money from one country to another. The storylines of the scams vary greatly, though they all have the same, or a similar, bottom line. We list several examples elsewhere. The sum of money is usually a “lump sum” of millions of dollars, of which the victim of the scam will supposedly receive a certain percentage as a reward for his/her help.

Through communication using phone, e-mail, faxes and/or letters, the scam artist will lure the victim into paying “advance fees” for the release of the money from the country in which it is held. Such fees may include (but are not limited to) bribes to officials, clearance fees, bank fees, visa fees, customs fees, fees to “security companies” or transport services, and so on.

The expenses are paid by the victim of the scam and usually sent to the scammer through means that are not easily traceable, such as a money transfer service. Examples of money transfer services that are popular among scammers are Western Union and MoneyGram. The funds can easily be picked up by the criminal using only rudimentary ID that can easily be falsified. Once the money has been collected, there is little or no chance of the victim recovering it once the scam is revealed. In addition, the criminals responsible will only very seldom be apprehended due to the difficulty both in establishing jurisdiction in these crimes and in tracing who they really are.

Scam artists, scammers, operate this scheme from a variety of locations, not only Nigeria, as it can seem from the name it goes by.We (the group responsible for Fraudwatchers.org) have personally recorded scammers from countries around the world, for example (this list is not by any definition exhaustive) Nigeria, Ghana, the Ivory Coast (Côte d'Ivoire), South Africa and other West African countries, United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Spain, Canada, the United States and Russia. The number of countries from which these criminals operate is on the rise, and more are recorded regularly. There are several estimates as to the number of people running these scams, but it is fairly safe to say that the actual number is in the hundreds of thousands, spread over many countries.

Please note that this is but a very brief description of the 419 scam. This is a type of fraud that spans hundreds of different letters (“formats”) and methods vary greatly from perpetrator to perpetrator. Other articles here describe some of the more common methods and formats in more detail.


This article Copyright: Fraudwatchers.org 2005
Written by Crux Polaris