The 'Nigerian Scam' also known as 'advance fee fraud' or 419 frauds, after a formerly applicable section of the Criminal Code of Nigeria is supposed to be the fifth largest industry in Nigeria. Countries like US, Australia and South Africa in fact issue trek warnings to their citizens to be careful of the Nigerian scam. There are about 200 online organizations those are only fighting 419 frauds.
The US has a "Nigerian Advance Fee Fraud Prevention Act of 1998" to concern with this and it is the US Secret Service that tracks these frauds. The New Delhi Police's Cyber Cell Crime Branch has also putup website www.cybercrime.planetindia.net/nigerian-scam, with information about the scam. Also, UK is one of the biggest hit in this scam.
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- According to a new study by Chatham House, Nigerian 419 internet scams, credit card fraud and money-laundering scams are today "a large and pressing problem" in the UK that is not being checked by even government.
- Some of the frauds send emails asking the victim for help in order to courage burgled funds out of Nigeria. Such scams charge the UK about £150m a year with about £30,000 loss per victim.
- Last year, a check at Heathrow airport exposed £20m-worth of forged cheque and postal orders coming from Lagos. According to the research, the scams are run by a small marginal compared to the Nigerian population or those visiting the UK.
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If you are experiencing excessive amounts of junk e-mail, or so called spam, you are just not alone. There are many struggling to deal with spam. Spam can be defined as any e-mail that pops on your e-mail box without your permission.These e-mails might be very irritating (some people report receiving 50 or more spam e-mails just in a day) but they could even be harmful. Recent studies have proved that many are designed to install spyware, or tracking software, on your computer.
Others include nasty code, which could plant viruses on your computer. Unfortunately, you may not tell which e-mails are safe and which are not until you open them. On average, three per cent of spam is fraudulent, and one per cent contains viruses. The use of fraudulent spam then includes e-mails designed to pinch money, or identities, from unaware victims. Money scams might also carry the sale of fraudulent goods, or a request to front fees with the promise of huge financial returns later.
One such spam, the "Nigerian 419" spam operation that originated from Nigeria, grossed $2 billion US during 2003. The "419" spam, named after the Nigerian criminal code section it infringes, was in fact Nigeria’s second largest business!
Experts predict that by 2007 up to 85 per cent of all e-mail would be made up of spam. A recent study by ITsecurity.com exposed that most spam e-mail, up to 60 per cent, come from U.S. Only four per cent come from Canada. Other key sources of spam carry China (10 per cent), South America (eight per cent) and the United Kingdom (six per cent).
Johannesburg - Haleema Hamza in Libya, Salim Spencer in Burkina Faso and Professor Charles Soludo in Nigeria have, amongst themselves, a total of R262.8m to alleviate someone's Christmas. Also, David John in London is offering a profitable job.
These four have stepped up their activities this festive season and are from four foreign nationals unknown to each other share a passion for providing a memorable festive season to an interested South African resident. They are just a few of the many fraudsters operating their scams in South Africa.
The police's 2005 & 2006 annual report showed that the circulation of fraudulent letters, generally through the internet, relating to 419 scams had grown-up with a total of 16,169 cases were reported to the police in the 2005 & 2006 financial year, and 5,131 people were under arrest said Superintendent Ronnie Naidoo.
A 419 scam is a confidence trick in which, people or a person is persuaded to advance relatively small sums of money in the hope of realizing a larger gain and are invited to impersonate a beneficiary of an untaken estate. But police have warned the public to be vigilant as fraudsters become very energetic in the festive season.
People are told they have inherited money or are Hamza in Libya needs "a Muslim organization or a dedicated Muslim individual" to help her move a huge sum out of her country which was left "by her late husband who was an oil explorer in Libya and Kuwait before he died in 2000".
Spencer, "the secretary of the auditing department of the African Development Bank" in Burkina Faso wants to transfer R103.8m which was "abandoned by one of our foreign customers who died along with his entire family in Algeria's earthquake on 23 May 2003". This explanation is also offered by Soludo, "the honorable governor of the Nigerian Apex Bank". He wants to transfer R159m.
Another warning has been issued in high level for the increase in international credit card scams, which mainly involves restaurant staff, said chief executive of the South African Banking Information Centre, Gilbert Swarts. Waiters are used by syndicates to swipe customer’s cards through a skimming device. Already, 66 people, including waiters, have been arrested for the scam.
