| Nigerian Scam |
By Nowshade Kabir, Rusbiz.com
Although this scam has its root from Nigeria dated a decade back,
nowadays, you receive similar scam letters from many African
countries, notably, Nigeria, Benin, Togo and even South Africa.
The subject lines of these emails are pretty similar. Something
like: Business relationship, Urgent Assistance needed,
Soliciting for your assistance, A cry for help etc. Most of the
emails from this scam begin in the same way. Here are two
excerpts from most recent emails that we received:
"I am Engr Moses Ekpen a director in the budget and planning
department of the Federal Ministry of Petroleum and Natural
Resources (FMPNR), I had a seven man Tenders Board Committee
in charge of contract award and Payment approvals. I came to
know of you in my search for a reliable and reputable person
to handle a very confidential transaction, which involves the
transfer of a huge sum of money to a foreign account."
Or
"I am Mrs. Mariam Abacha, the widow of Gen. Sani Abacha, The
Late Nigerian Military Head of State. You were introduced to
me through the Chamber of Commerce. I am presently in distress
and under House arrest while my son Mohammed is undergoing
trial in Lagos and Abuja. He is presently detained in prison
custody. The government has frozen all the family account and
auctioned all our properties.
To save the family from total bankruptcy I have managed to
ship to Europe and Asia through a Shipping company, the sum o
f US20, 000,000.00 respectively kept by my late husband."
The essence of these emails are also basically the same -
the person although does not know you, thanks to your business
reputation, has decided to contact you with a very confidential
proposal to transfer a mind boggling amount of money from his
country to any foreign land.
There could be numerous stories but the bottom line is they
require your help to transfer the amount. For your service
they will promise you something from 10 to 40% of the whole
amount. There would be a telephone no or an email address to
contact the person.
You may wonder how they swindle people.
There are various ways that the crooks rip off their victims.
Some of the most commons ones of them are described below:
They will ask you to open a bank account under their name. On
their second step, they will ask you to deposit a sum of say
US$ 10000 to that account, explaining if the account does not
have any decent amount, the officials those who are responsible
for transferring the promised millions of dollars would become
suspicious and won't authorize the transaction. Once you
deposited the asked sum, they simply withdraw it and disappear.
Usually they choose a bank where they might have some
connections. So you, after losing your money, do not get any
help from the bank either.
They will ask you to send some merchandize or gifts for the
officials they need to bribe in order to make the transactions
of the assumed millions of dollars smoothly. Naturally, you
never hear from them once you sent the requested gifts to their
address.
We even heard stories like this one: A man was persuaded to
come to Nigeria to look after the transaction by himself. Over
there he was kept hostage until he shifted all his liquid assets
to the thugs.
Looking at the increasing quantity of scam emails that we receive,
this only convinces that many fall for this seemingly simple trap.
According to FBI these swindlers have defrauded millions of
dollars from gullible people.
There could be other variations of this scam, next time you read
an email that feels suspicious, just delete it! There are other
ways of making money!
Some words of cautions! Although most of these scams originate
from African countries, please do not generalize and consider
that all companies form these countries are bad. As usual a few
people are responsible for tarnishing the reputation of a country.
About the author
Nowshade Kabir is the founder, primary developer and present CEO
of Rusbiz.com. He has Ph. D. degree in Information Technology.
Dr. Kabir has over 12 years of experience in International Trade
and has worked as an advisor to several government projects.
You can contact him at mailto:nowshade@rusbiz.com,
http://www.rusbiz.com
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