A staggering RM20mil - that’s how much Malaysians have been conned by African tricksters in the past few years in at least 11 internationally known scams ranging from Black Money to inheritances which promise non-existent wealth. That was what was reported in The Star a couple of days ago. The victims are, ironically, educated people such as lawyers, accountants, academicians and even politicians who somehow were convinced that they could become instant millionaires by investing with these people despite all the publicity about such scams.
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As mentioned in the report, these scams are not something new. It has been around under different names or schemes. It was generally known before as advance fee fraud. This form of fraud is similar to a much older scam known as the Spanish Prisoner scam in which the trickster would tell the scam victim that a (fictitious) rich prisoner had promised to share (non-existent) treasure with the victim if the latter would send money to bribe the prison guards. An even older version of this scam existed by the end of 18th century, and is called "the Letter From Jerusalem" by Eugène François Vidocq in his memoirs
An advance-fee fraud is a confidence trick in which the target is persuaded to advance sums of money in the hope of realizing a significantly larger gain. Among the variations on this type of scam, are the Nigerian Letter (also called the 419 fraud, Nigerian scam, Nigerian bank scam, or Nigerian money offer, the Black money scam as well as Russian/Ukrainian scam (also extremely widespread, though far less popular than the former). Both the so-called Russian and Nigerian scams stand for wholly dissimilar organized crime traditions, they therefore tend to use altogether different breeds of approaches.
The number "419" refers to the article of the Nigerian Criminal Code (part of Chapter 38: "Obtaining Property by false pretences; Cheating") dealing with fraud. The 419 scam originated in the early 1980s as the oil-based Nigerian economy declined. Several unemployed university students first used this scam as a means of manipulating business visitors interested in shady deals in the Nigerian oil sector before targeting businessmen in the west, and later the wider population. Scammers in the early-to-mid 1990s targeted companies, sending scam messages via letter, fax, or telex. The spread of email and easy access to email-harvesting software significantly lowered the cost of sending scam letters by utilizing the Internet. In the 2000s, the 419 scam has spurred imitations from other locations in Africa, Asia and Eastern Europe, and, more recently, from North America, Western Europe (mainly UK), and Australia, the latter three mainly done by Africans.
Some other typical scams include cases where victims of the scam are promised a lottery win (example) or a large sum of money sitting in a bank account or in a deposit box at a security company. Often the storyline involves a family member of a former member of government of an African country, a ministerial official, an orphan or widow of a rich businessman, etc. Here is an example. Variants of the plot involving the Philippines, Taiwan, China, Hong Kong, Korea, Iraq, Kuwait, UAE, Mauritius, etc. are also known. Some emails include pictures of boxes stuffed with dollar bills, scans of fake passports, bank or government documents and pictures of supposedly the sender.
With so much literature written available on the net and occasional reports of scams and frauds, one cannot help but wonder how Malaysians could still fall prey to such scams?????.
An advance-fee fraud is a confidence trick in which the target is persuaded to advance sums of money in the hope of realizing a significantly larger gain. Among the variations on this type of scam, are the Nigerian Letter (also called the 419 fraud, Nigerian scam, Nigerian bank scam, or Nigerian money offer, the Black money scam as well as Russian/Ukrainian scam (also extremely widespread, though far less popular than the former). Both the so-called Russian and Nigerian scams stand for wholly dissimilar organized crime traditions, they therefore tend to use altogether different breeds of approaches.
The number "419" refers to the article of the Nigerian Criminal Code (part of Chapter 38: "Obtaining Property by false pretences; Cheating") dealing with fraud. The 419 scam originated in the early 1980s as the oil-based Nigerian economy declined. Several unemployed university students first used this scam as a means of manipulating business visitors interested in shady deals in the Nigerian oil sector before targeting businessmen in the west, and later the wider population. Scammers in the early-to-mid 1990s targeted companies, sending scam messages via letter, fax, or telex. The spread of email and easy access to email-harvesting software significantly lowered the cost of sending scam letters by utilizing the Internet. In the 2000s, the 419 scam has spurred imitations from other locations in Africa, Asia and Eastern Europe, and, more recently, from North America, Western Europe (mainly UK), and Australia, the latter three mainly done by Africans.
Some other typical scams include cases where victims of the scam are promised a lottery win (example) or a large sum of money sitting in a bank account or in a deposit box at a security company. Often the storyline involves a family member of a former member of government of an African country, a ministerial official, an orphan or widow of a rich businessman, etc. Here is an example. Variants of the plot involving the Philippines, Taiwan, China, Hong Kong, Korea, Iraq, Kuwait, UAE, Mauritius, etc. are also known. Some emails include pictures of boxes stuffed with dollar bills, scans of fake passports, bank or government documents and pictures of supposedly the sender.
With so much literature written available on the net and occasional reports of scams and frauds, one cannot help but wonder how Malaysians could still fall prey to such scams?????.
