Don't be a Mugu! Please read this important
note about common scams that are perpetrated both online and in "real
life"
These tips apply not only to internet based businesses, but also to
newspaper ads, retail businesses, fax machines, mail order, and other
mediums as well.
If you are the recipient of any questionable replies
through our site, please forward them to webmaster@50statesclassifieds.com
immediately so that we can delete the offending user and block them from
the site.
What is a Mugu, you may ask? It is a term originally used in
nigeria, but now with universal usage. Originally, it was adopted
by the scammers to refer to what they consider to be "Stupid,
Greedy People"
- in other words, it's how they refer to the victims who fall for their
scams. The word "mugu" implies that the victim
deserved what they got for being greedy, or naive.
From Wikipedia: 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 made the cost of sending scam letters through the Internet low.
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 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 American Dialect Society has traced the term "419
fraud" back to 1992.
What does this mean to sellers on the Internet?
Read on...
Beware of anyone offering to pay more than you are asking for the item.
This is typically called the
"Advance Fee Scam" This variation involves sending you an international
money order for a large amount of money. Then, a "shipper"
or "friend" or other partner comes to collect the item and
the excess cash. A month later, when the MO bounces, the scammer has
already gotten away with the item and the cash. Tricky!
A great way to
spot these people early is to look at their grammar and spelling. Yes,
normal people will make typos and other mistakes. But if you read the
message and it sounds like the person barely speaks english, or if the
sentences are choppy and very badly spelled, this is a HUGE warning flag!
Another common scam includes using stolen credit cards to purchase large
ticket items from US companies, and having them shipped to foreign locations.
By the time the person sees the fraudulent charges to their credit card
and reverses them, the items are unrecoverable.
The sad truth is, there are as many different variations on these scams
as there are people perpetrating them. Always trust your gut instincts.
If you think that the person responding to your ad seems strange, they
probably are!Be wary of anyone who wants
to buy your item without regard to price, color, size, etc. If they contact
you about "your item" and have a long list of questions like "what
is the last known condition that the item was in" and "where
is the item currently located", but never mention what the item
is anywhere in their message to you, chances are that they responded
to dozens or even hundreds of ads and just copy/pasted the same note
to each seller.
Remember that anyone who asks for your
social security number, a photocopy of your passport, or your personal
or business banking information, is NOT to be trusted!
Also beware of anyone who repeatedly calls you "Dear" for
no apparent reason, or who talks about God excessively. I've found that
many of these scammers will "Praise God" dozens of times
in their messages, hoping to throw you off track and gain your trust.
They assume that if they praise God, you will automatically trust them
without question! The phrase that comes to mind is, "Methinks the lady
doth protest too much". In other words, they're talking about it over
and over to try and convince you of something that simply isn't true.
The reason they say it a rediculous amount of times and work "God" or
"Jesus" or "Praise Be" or similar phrases into every 3rd sentance is
that they are so desperate for you to believe
them and fall for their scam, that they "over-act" the part. Those who
praise god continuously are most likey just trying to distract you with
one hand so you won't notice what their other hand is doing, so to speak.
The USA is known worldwide as being one of the most religious countries
in the world, and yet,
something that most foreigners would not understand about us is that
it's also considered extremely tacky, in poor taste, and incredibly rude,
to bring up personal religious beliefs during business transactions
with strangers. This rule varies by region, for example in the south,
they are much more religious than we are in the north. However, someone
who is not from the United States won't understand that nuance, they
only know that statistically, we are very religious. So, basically, it's
a red flag for several reasons.
Perhaps the weirdest variation of these types of scams is regarding
personals and dating. These scammers reply to personal
ads and lonely people looking for friends, rush into a friendship or
relationship online after a few hours of chatting, and then convince
these lonely souls to wire them money for plane tickets, train tickets,
or whatever the case may be. Often, they will talk to someone for an
hour and then declare their undying love and ask for a few grand to make
preparations to fly to the victim's home immediately. The lucky victims
are the ones who never hear from the scammer again after they've been
had - it's much worse to have one show up on your doorstep!
And sometimes they really do.
Scammers
also like to hack into people's social networking accounts (facebook, myspace,
etc) and send out urgent messages to everyone on the victim's Friends List.
The message usually states something to the effect of,
"I was traveling abroad when I got robbed, they took my wallet,
my checkbook, my credit cards, everything. I'm completely stranded and
scared. Can you wire me some cash and I'll pay you back when I get home?" People
respond quickly to aid their loved one - in some cases, without
stopping to reflect that they had seen their friend the week before and
he never mentioned he was going to Nigeria... The scammers are banking
on at least some of the recipients of these messages being so worried
and upset by the idea of their loved one alone, scared, and in foreign
cities, that they will suspended their doubts and just sent the cash.
In yet another variation of the 419 scam, a supposed
widow, child, friend, etc. of a famous general, or other important
person, offers to split billions of dollars with you in return for
your help in fleeing their country and their supposed enemies. This
involves - you guessed it - giving the scammer your SSN, bank account
number, a scan of your passport, etc. in order to facilitate the transfer
of billions of dollars to your account. They need you
to send them lots and lots of money in order to get the money released
from their country. (Some will say it's to bribe officials; others
will say that they have to pay to retrieve the trunk the money is hidden
in from a bank, storage locker, or other holding facility; and
still others will claim that they are currently afraid for their lives
in a refugee camp, or that their baby sister is dying of a rare disease
and they need to seek emergency medical help, or that their family has
been killed by enemies looking for the cash and they must escape, or
are enduring some other horrible living conditions - anything to play
on your human sympathies.
Once you send them money,
they will continue to come up with reasons why they need "just a
little bit more" - to bribe one last official, to fill out one last
permit or form, to complete the transaction, to escape the refugee camp,
to make preparations... They are banking on the fact that
you will not want to lose what you already sent them, and that you will
send them "just
one more payment" to
avoid losing the previous advances. In some cases, they will even send
you a check if they are desperate enough. They claim
that it is a good faith show to reimburse you, or to cover your expenses
while you wait for the rest. But make no mistake: cashing these checks
will catch up with you in a very, very bad way! They are usually forged
replicas, either stolen or created from the stolen banking information
of people or companies who have previously fallen for their scam. When
these people notice that the check has cleared their account, they will
invariably contact the bank about the fraud, and then whomever cashed
it will have two problems: One, check fraud, for cashing a fraudulent
check. Two, usually the scammer will have some clever reason why you
should send them the money to complete the transaction - and by the time
you find out it's a bad check, the money is long gone.
We're
usually talking tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars, which
you become responsible for if you are greedy or naive
enough to cash the check.) To the scammers it's just
a game, but to you,
it's a terrible nightmare. Click that link - you'll see an example of
how Nigerian popular culture often idolizes scammers - the country is
so poor that the scammers become heroes because they're the only ones
who are spending any money in the community, which helps everyone - much
in the same way that US gangs are often welcomed in certain neighborhoods
despite people realizing it's technically illegal. They are seen as helping
the community, and are often looked up to as role models and businesspersons..
You have to be alert - protect yourself
by using common sense - do not let scammers lull you into being criminally
greedy! Don't let them play on your human sympathies either! It is a
human tendancy to believe that which we want to believe, even when we
know in the back of our heads it is "not quite right".
Many
people who have fallen for these schemes end up in jail, with their homes
taken away, and worse. On the other hand, there have even been cases
where people have gone to meet these people in Africa and other countries,
believing they were going to complete the transaction, rescue their "friend",
or help their "partner"
leave the country safely... only to be robbed, assaulted, and even murdered
by the scammers. These "people" usually operate in groups,
and can be extremely dangerous. Here
is a very scary story, for example. Other victims have committed
suicide after they realize what has happened - imagine being $100,000+
in debt because you mortgaged your house, sold your possessions, and
borrowed money from friends, family, or business associates, which you
can never repay no matter how hard you work - and the shame that goes
along with knowing how badly you were taken by the scammer - pretty depressing,
huh? These scams are truly harmful, any way you look at them.
My advice is to ignore them (replying to them will just confirm that
you've got a valid email address, which they can spam, and/or sell to
all their other spammer buddies). You can also report them to the FBI.
However, whenever I've called them in the past, they generally
say something along the lines of
"thanks for telling us, but we don't have the manpower to follow
up on this". By far the most fun and satisfying solution (if you
have the time) is Scam Baiting.
Scam Baiting is when people reply to these fraudulent messages
in order to bait
the scammer. The idea behind this is to tie them up so long that they
miss the chance to scam more naive people, thereby doing a noble
service for your fellow human beings, as well as getting a good laugh
and passing the time constructively. The Baiters will pretend to go along
with things, delaying as long as possible, with involved stories about
why it's taking them so long to get the cash together, and why they need
this picture, or that carving in wood, or to see a picture of the stargate
symbol being tattood on the scammer's arm. In some cases, they
get the scammers to take embarrassing and even humiliating pictures -
thanks to the language barrier, you can get them to write bizarre
things on signs that they are then photographed with, to prove
their identity and/or sincerity before you complete the deal. The baiters
that do it regularly sometimes have friendly competitions with others
to see who can get the funniest or most outrageous pictures based on
a theme or phrase.
My favorite site for Scam Baiting is www.419eater.com.
It's hilarious! They always have a good explanation of why they want
the scammer to write a particular phrase, or pose a particular way, or
tattoo a particular thing on their body, and since your average foreign
scammer doesn't tend to speak proper english anyways, they often don't
catch the nuances of how bizarre these things are that they're being
asked to do. What's could possibly be more fun than messing with criminals
who want to defraud unsuspecting people? Not much! :) However, with that
being said, use caution and leave it to the pro's. The last thing you
want is to accidentally make an enemy of an international crime ring!
There are plenty of Scam Baiting websites out there for you to enjoy.
The seasoned members are extremely conscious of the security risks involved
and take all due precautions so that the rest of us can be safely entertained
at the expense of the bad guys.
Now, just to vent my own frustrations a bit, I'll tell you about my
daily struggle with these scammers. I design websites, and I have over
600 "webmaster@" email addresses under my control, all of which
receive more spam than I can count, each and every day. Because "webmaster@..."
is the most common email address, the spammers email it knowing that
95% of the time it will be valid. I receive at least 20 copies of every
variation of this scam each day, times 600 email addresses. I used to
go through and get the IP address and headers for each message and forward
them to spamcop, the FBI, etc, until I just gave up as time went on.
Now, I've learned to just keep updating my spam filters to catch each
new variation I find. If I still did it the old way, I'd be spending
40+ hours a week just deleting them! So, while I can completely empathize
with everyone who gets these messages occasionally, I have to tell you,
it could be much worse - you could have *my* spam problems and receive
scams and viruses in your email hundreds of times a day!
Please don't let the scammers and spammers scare you away from Internet
based selling. These scammers target retail businesses, newspaper advertisers,
mail order catalogs, random fax machines, telephone order companies,
and other businesses as well. The internet is just the latest medium
these criminals are using to reach potential targets. It's really no
different than any of the other methods they used before the Internet
came along. To protect yourself, just use caution and common sense, and
trust your gut instincts when doing business both online and in real
life!