The song remains the same, only the delivery changes slightly. But with each iteration of this fraud, new victims, themselves greedy and gullible, are found to take the bait. Groups of con artists – and that is really what they are given the quality of their prose – have been operating from Nigeria and Ghana since the early 1980s and recently spreading to other African countries, promising millions of dollars to folks in Europe or the US who will help them to shift money from Nigeria. But hold on, it is not just any money; this is often allegedly from over-invoiced contracts, stolen money, skimmed from projects with shadowy Russian companies or simply siphoned from state coffers, or stolen from an official who has already himself stolen the money.
So what you have are unsolicited faxes, and more recently emails, that ask the victim to fork over a few thousand dollars or at least for their complete bank details to grease the way to launder stolen funds through their banks (who won’t notice that your little retirement check has ballooned this month to $30 million dollars) in exchange for a 30 percent cut of the total proceeds. Or, once they have sent notes on corporate letterhead to back up their initial electronic contact, “problems” might arise that require a bit of cash to work out.
Were it true it would still be illegal. But of course, none of it is true; it is simply a ruse by smart cons to rid rubes of their cash – and it works. According to the US State Department, the various schemes take in hundreds of millions of dollars each year worldwide, and at one point was estimated to be the third-largest industry in Nigeria.
During the past few years, law enforcement agencies in Europe and the US have become more active in trying to track down and suppress the swindle, and the Nigerian government this year decreed a “zero-tolerance” policy for the scam, yet it continues to flourish, in part thanks to the low cost and ease of mass mailing via email and the move by some of the scammers to other countries. Compared to faxes and letters, email and the expansion of Internet use have opened a new set of potential victims to the con artists.
But it is not as if the scammers don’t do any work. Like anyone seeking money or a job, they have to get their foot in the door, and they do so with strong, well-written, and amusing cover letters. “Compliments of the day,” writes Emmanuel Aligbe, personal assistant to Air Vice Marshal Nura Imam (retired), former chief of air staff to the Federal Republic of Nigeria under the former military junta of General Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida (retired), Nigeria’s head of state between 1985 and 1993. “It gives me great pleasure to write you. I got your contact from the Internet and decided to write you for urgent assistance.”
Indeed, Aligbe needs assistance to smuggle out money that Imam embezzled from air force barracks contracts and that he, Aligbe, stole from Imam’s strong room in three aluminum boxes – for a total of $32 million in cash – which he now has in Benin. To make matters worse, Imam has put out a contract on Aligbe’s head. “Please, I want you to help me carry this money to your account in Europe where we can invest it in a profit-yielding venture,” Aligbe says, sounding much like a budding venture capitalist and providing his Yahoo email address as his only contact information.
After General Babangida was forced from power in 1993, General Sani Abacha seized power, which he held until he died in 1998. Unfortunately, it seems times have been hard since for his family. “I am sorry for the embarrassment my letter might cause you as we have not had any correspondence before this letter,” writes Dr. Mrs. Miriam Abacha, the grieving widow. Referring to kickback money from an investment with a Russian company in a steel plant, she adds:
She then declared the company bankrupt, but since her accounts have been frozen (she includes a hotlink to an article on the subject), she needs help to get this money to Europe and will pay 30 percent of the total. “You can contact me at the email address above,” she writes. “I must use this opportunity to implore you to exercise the utmost indulgence to keep this matter extraordinarily confidential.”
What hampers many law enforcement efforts and tamping down on these scams is that many of the victims do keep quite about their losses. Adamu Muhammad, assistant director of Interpol's sub-directorate for Africa says that the victims‚ complicit feelings in the affair keep them quiet. "Many of the victims are not willing to testify," he says. "From the beginning, the victim knows that any money to be taken out of the country is illegal." He refers specifically to the classic embezzlement scams that make up about 85 percent of all the cases Interpol has seen as scenarios in which fax or e-mail recipients "are literally blinded by the commissions offered" and later feel they cannot turn to the police.
Muhammad adds that crackdowns against this type of fraud in Nigeria have caused many of its practitioners to head to other African countries, such as Benin, Togo, Botswana and South Africa. However, the police in some of those countries lack the technology to fight the offenders. „Many countries in Africa have yet to grapple with the Internet and many police agencies are not yet prepared to handle that type of investigation,‰ Muhammad says. To try to reduce the technology gap, Interpol is equipping police stations in several African countries with computers and Internet connections while also publishing a best practices manual on combating e-mail and other communications-based crimes.
The Nigeria “419” scam, as it is often known, has existed since long before email became prevalent, but it is the ubiquity of the technology in the office and in the home that has allowed these “entrepreneurs” to target a whole new set of customers and keep their revenue and profits growing nicely. Yet again, the Internet is helping business, albeit in unexpected ways.
