Opportunity to Earn $2 Billion Snubbed

As 2007 comes to a close I suppose I should be grateful for the many opportunities I have been offered by total strangers to pocket millions of dollars for very little work. I estimate that I have received three or four such opportunities a week this year. Each email spins a story more grand and with a more perilous and tragic story than the next. At an average of ten million dollars per offer this calculates to be in excess of two billion dollars that I didn’t have the heart to work on.

Call me lazy, but then again, who says America isn’t the land of opportunity? Surely Nigeria, Sierra Leone and the Ivory Coast must think so since that is where the majority of email requests for assistance emanate.

Here is a portion of an email I received tonight and what inspired me to post this. Spellings and grammar are original:

16,Rue des jardins Cocody
les Deux-Plateaux
Abidjan Ivory Coast
Please write to me with this adress :
andree_kone1987@yahoo.fr

Dearest Partiner,

I am Miss Andrèe Kone from Ivory Coast. I am a 20 and Alex my youger brother is 18 years.Our Father was a serving director of the Cocoa exporting board until his death and Our Mother was assassinated by the rebels following the political uprising.

Before the death of our parents they made a deposit of Ten Million USA Dollars ($10,000,000.00)here in Ivory Coast in security company. This fund they intended to build a company and buy a cocoa processing machines and materials in future as he will be retired but they couldn't make until death call them home. (It goes on).

Most of us recognize the absurdity of such a blind proposal. ... And they have a name. They are known as Nigerian Scams (also known as a "4-1-9" or "Advance Fee Fraud" scheme). One wonders why I would receive so many. Well the truth is, because such emails work and have been working for years. This con works by blinding the victim with promises of an unimaginable fortune.

Once the sucker (many an American) is sufficiently glittery-eyed over the prospect of becoming fabulously rich, he is squeezed for however much money he has. This he parts with willingly, thinking "What's $5,000 here or $10,000 there when I'm going to end up with $10 million when this is all done?" He fails to realize during the sting that he's never going to get the promised fortune; all of this messing around is designed to part him from his money.

The Nigerian 419 Advance Fee Fraud came to the attention of the public and regulators during the 1970s over letters generally aimed at small businesses purporting to come from figures in the Nigerian government. According to a 1997 newspaper article:

"We have confirmed losses just in the United States of over $100 million in the last 15 months," said Special Agent James Caldwell, of the Secret Service financial crimes division. "And that's just the ones we know of. We figure a lot of people don't report them."

This is indeed big business. The Nigerian Scam is, according to published reports, the Third to Fifth largest industry in Nigeria.

Most check and lottery fraud are Nigerian 419 AFF

1. Lottery fraud (95% Nigerian advance fee scammers)

2. Check fraud (76% Nigerian advance fee scammers)

3. 419 advance fee fraud (97% Nigerian advance fee scammers)

4. Phishing. (5% Nigerian advance fee scammers)

Although these scams can be amusing, for people who fall for them, it can be a serious business. According to the David Emery's article The Nigerian E-mail Hoax: West African Scammers Take to the Net, March 14, 2002, published on the San Francisco Chronicle's SF Gate web site, at least 15 people have been murdered as part of these scams. The US Treasury Department estimates that these scams cost people in the United States about $100 million a year.

If you received a stranger’s email offering to share millions of dollars with you, would you not be a bit skeptical? Wouldn’t you at least do a bit of research? Apparently some of us do not. Making them all the poorer for it and providing added proof in my premise that common sense is indeed on a downward spiral.

Links for Further Reference:

• Liquidmatrix Security Digest » 419 Emails Persist
• Top 5 Myths About Phishing Transported
• Late breaking news
• Dr. Phil Busts Scam Artists ~ Malicious Intent
• Nothing found for 419-scam-ends-in-murder Email-marketing-email-marketing-..
• Virtual Hosting Blog » Top 20 Hilarious and Creative Internet Scams
• Nigeria: Beware of Fake Central Bank, Immigration Service, oil company webs..
• marklon : You can't get the staff – Social engineering
• The Alternative Broadcasting Online News Station » 10 Ways to Protect..
• Scam Related News (11/21/2007) : Scam Alerts Email Scams Text Message S..
• Recognize The Top 10 Email Scams And Protect Yourself