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.[6] The American Dialect Society has traced the term "419
fraud" back to 1992.[7]
What does this mean to sellers on the Internet?
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!
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!
Also beware of anyone who wants to buy your item without regard
to price, color, size, etc. 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!
Perhaps the weirdest variation of this is regarding personals and dating.
These scammers are now starting to reply to personal ads and lonely people
looking for friends, to convince them to wire money for them to come
and visit. 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. The lucky victims are the ones who never hear from
the scammer again - it's much worse to have one show up on your doorstep!
Another variation is the "Classic"
419 scam, which derives it's name from the Nigerian statute
of the law forbidding this type of behaviour. The majority of these
scams used to come from Nigeria, but these days, they are coming from
the UK, Philippines, and ALL other parts of the world.
In this 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 the bank, a storage locker, or other holding facility, and
still others will claim that they are in refugee camps or other horrible
living conditions and play on your human sympathies. If you're helping
someone who is suffering, then it becomes "noble" and distracts
from the obvious scam. At least, that's what they are hoping.
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, etc, 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 learn about how Nigerian
popular culture 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.
You have to be alert - protect yourself
by using common sense - do not let them lull you into being criminally
greedy! 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 wrong. It's the same
reason that some people spend 50k in one night of gambling. They
know they shouldn't, but they convince themselves that "just this
one last time" will win it all back and more.
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 and help their "partner"
leave their country safely... only to be robbed, or even murdered by
the scammers. These people usually operate in groups, and can be extremely
dangerous. Here
is a very scary story, for example. The other sad truth is that many 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, or sell to a spammer).
You can also report these to the FBI, although 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". But by far the best 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 people for real, thereby doing a noble service
for your fellow (more gullible) human beings. The Baiters will pretend
to go along with things, delaying as long as possible. In some cases,
they even get the scammers to take embarrassing pictures (thanks to the
language barrier, you can get them to write hilarious unique things on
signs to have them "prove"
their sincerity before you complete the deal, and they have no idea what
kind of joke you're playing on them until it's too late). My favorite
site for Scam Baiting is www.419eater.com. It's hilarious! They always
have a "good explanation"
of why they want them to write that particular phrase, 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. And what's more fun than messing with criminals
who want to defraud unsuspecting people? Not much! :)
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!
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Resources:
What is a Ponzi scheme?