By Patricia Jones, Alliance Poverty Task Force
A wealthy person needs to get a huge sum of money out of their country because the government is unstable and they believe their assets will be seized. They urgently request your assistance, offering a huge commission that is a percentage of their treasure.
The Nigerian scam was a common email fraud in the 1990s, and variations are still around. The person asking for help was a Nigerian royal, government official, or business executive whose fortune was hostage to war, corruption, or political unrest. This desperate person needed only your bank account number to transfer the money for safekeeping. They may have asked for a small advance payment to cover taxes, bank fees, well-placed bribes, or other costs involved with the transfer. For your trouble, some of their millions would become your millions.
If you bit, your Nigerian “partner” drained your account dry or kept asking for more and more money because their bank, lawyer, or some organization added charges that had to be paid before the money could be transferred.
The Nigerian scam is also called an advance fee scam or a 419 scam, named for the section of Nigeria’s criminal code that deals with fraud. Of course, the scam can come from any country and involve different crises, depending on where the hotspots in the world are at any given time. It might come from a U.S. soldier stationed abroad, or a U.S. business executive rather than a foreign citizen. The plea might come through email, regular mail, phone texts, or through your social media accounts like Facebook.
The Nigerian scam is based on the Spanish Prisoner, a confidence game that was used in Europe in the early 1800’s. In Spanish Prisoner, the con artist wrote his victim, the mark, that he was a wealthy person who has been imprisoned in Spain under a false identity. Some versions had the imprisoned person being an unknown or remote relative of the mark. Most of the time the contact person was a friend of the prisoner. Supposedly the prisoner could not reveal his identity without serious repercussions, and was relying on this friend to raise money to secure his release.
The contact person asked the mark put up some of the funds, with a promise of a great monetary reward when the prisoner was released. Sometimes the deal included the hand of the prisoner’s beautiful daughter in marriage. (Remember, women were considered property then.) After the mark turned over the funds, he would be informed of further difficulties, and more money was needed.
What are the warning signs you are being scammed? You receive a contact out of the blue asking you to 'help' someone from another country transfer money out of their country. There is a long, sad story about why the money cannot be transferred by the owner, perhaps war, a coup, or inheritance problem. They want to move the money
straight into your bank account; could you share the number? You’ll get a large share of the amount for helping them access their trapped funds – lots of money! Probably a bank, lawyer, or government agency needs to be paid certain fees before the money can be moved, and you can use a money transfer service like a wire service to send the money.
If you think it’s a scam, don’t respond. Not many people fall for the Nigerian scam, but those who do want to get rich quick, and they lose thousands of dollars. If you want to verify information, do not use the contact information they give you. Instead do an independent search. You can do an Internet search for names, contact information, or the exact wording to check for a scam.
If you are corresponding with or being harassed by a scammer, contact the FBI. They have an Internet Crime Complaint Center, ic3.gov. Report these frauds to the Federal Trade Commission at ftc.gov/complaint.
Remember: If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.