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Advance Fee fraud
(Sourced from www.wikipedia.com )
An advance fee fraud is a confidence trick in which the target is persuaded to advance relatively small sums of money in the hope of realizing a much larger gain. Among the variations on this type of scam are the Nigerian Letter (or 419 fraud) and "The Spanish Prisoner."
How Advanced Fee Fraud Works
This scam usually begins with a letter-form e-mail sent to many target recipients making an offer that will purportedly result in a large payoff for the intended victim. The stories behind the offers vary, but the standard plot is that a person or government entity is in possession of a large amount of money or gold. This person, for myriad reasons, either cannot access the wealth directly or is no longer in need of it. Such people, who are fictional or impersonated characters played by the scammer, could include the wife of a deposed African or Indonesian leader, a terminally ill wealthy person, a wealthy foreigner who had deposited money in the bank just before dying in a plane crash, leaving no will or known next of kin, a U.S. soldier who has stumbled upon a hidden cache of gold, a business being audited by the government, a disgruntled worker or corrupt government official who has embezzled funds, and similar characters. The money could be in the form of gold bullion, gold dust, money in a bank account, so-called "blood diamonds", a series of checks or bank drafts, and so forth. The sums involved are usually in the millions of dollars, and the investor is promised a large share, often forty percent or more, if they will assist the scam character in retrieving the money from holding and/or dispense of it according to the scam character's wishes. The proposed deal is often presented as a "harmless" white-collar crime, in order to dissuade participants from later contacting the authorities.
Many operations are professionally organized in Nigeria, with offices, working fax numbers, and often contacts at government offices. The victim who attempts to research the background of the offer will often find that all pieces fit perfectly together. Such scammers can often lure wealthy investors, investment groups, or other business entities into scams resulting in multi-million dollar losses. However, many scammers are part of less organized gangs or are operating independently; such scammers have reduced access to the above connections and thus have little success with wealthier investors or business entities attempting to research them, but are still convincing to middle-class individuals and small businesses, and can bilk hundreds of thousands of dollars from such victims.
If the victim agrees to the deal, the other side will first send several documents bearing official government stamps, seals etc. (some of these documents will be more convincing than others), and then introduce a delay or monetary hurdle that prevents the deal from occurring as planned, such as "in order to transmit the money, we need to bribe a bank official. Could you help us with a loan?" or "In order for you to be allowed to be a party to the transaction, you need to have holdings at a Nigerian bank of $100,000 or more" or similar. More delays and more additional costs are added, always keeping the promise of an imminent large transfer alive, convincing the victim that the money they are currently paying will be covered several times over by the payoff. Sometimes psychological pressure is added by claiming that the Nigerian side, in order to pay certain fees, had to sell all belongings and borrow money on their house, or by pointing out the different salary scale and living conditions in Africa compared to the West. Most of the time, however, the needed psychological pressure is self-applied; once the victim has put money in toward the payoff, they feel they have a vested interest in seeing the "deal" through.
In any case, the promised money transfer never happens. The money or gold does not exist, and by the time the victim realizes this (often only after being confronted by a third party who has noticed the transactions or conversation and recognized the scam), they may have sent thousands of dollars of their own money, and sometimes thousands or millions more that has been borrowed or stolen, to the scammer.
The spam e-mails perpetrating these scams are often sent from Internet cafes equipped with satellite Internet. Recipient addresses and email content are copied and pasted into a web mail interface using a standalone storage medium, such as a memory card. Many areas of Lagos, such as Festac, contain many shady cybercafes that serve scammers; many cybercafes seal their doors during afterhours, such as from 10:30 PM to 7:00 AM, so that scammers inside may work without fear of discovery.
Nigeria also contains many businesses that provide false documents used in scams; after a scam involving a forged signature of Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo in summer 2005, Nigerian authorities raided a market in the Oluwole section of Lagos. The police seized thousands of Nigerian and non-Nigerian passports, 10,000 blank British Airways boarding passes, 10,000 United States money orders, customs documents, false university certificates, 500 printing plates, and 500 computers.
Some London-based gangs have been known to use spam ware on laptops which they surreptitiously connect to the cafe's network, but even this software is notably out-of-date. While this method is significantly more labour-intensive per mail sent than others, it offers near-total anonymity and allows them to very quickly and easily relocate. The often very professional layout of web pages and so on used in the scams suggests that they do not lack technical sophistication.
Scammers often request that payments be made using a wire transfer service like Western Union. The reason given by the scammer will usually relate to the speed at which the payment can be received and processed, allowing quick release of the supposed payoff. The real reason is that wire transfers and similar methods of payment are irreversible, untraceable and, because identification beyond knowledge of the details of the transaction is often not required, completely anonymous.
Variants of the Advance Fee Fraud:
Lottery Scam
The lottery scam involves fake notices of lottery wins. The winner will usually be asked to send sensitive information to a free email account. The scammer will then notify the victim that in order to release the funds, some small fee (insurance, registration, shipping etc.) is required. Once the fee has been sent, the scammer will invent another fee and attempt to collect it. While the advance fee fraud is playing out, the personal information gathered by the original e-mail will also be sold and can sometimes be used to drain bank accounts or lines of credit.
Much like the Auction overpayment fraud detailed above, a new variant of the lottery scam involves fake or stolen checks being sent to the 'winner' of the lottery (these checks representing a part payment of the winnings). The winner will then be more likely to assume that the win is legitimate and subsequently more likely to send the fee (which he does not realize is an advance fee). The check, and associated funds, will then be flagged by the bank when the fraud is discovered and debited from the victim's account.
The following is an actual email from a scammer:
Head Office
Berwick County Towers,
Albert Berwick Courts,
Upon Tweed,
London BW8 2PX
Tel :+447045719658
Fax: +44 7075209593
E-mail : service@berwickcountynet.com
IN LIEU TO THE TRANSFER OF FUNDS (WINNING FUNDS) FROM THE UK NATIONAL LOTTERY UK TO THIS SERIAL NUMBER: (teks verwyder)
You are welcome to BERWICK COUNTY BANK PLC. The payment Bank for UK NATIONAL LOTTERY ONLINE PROMO. We are pleased to be at your service. We are Regulated and Stipulated by the Financial Service Authority (FSA), the financial institutions that govern all financial activities in the United Kingdom. In receipt to the transferring of your funds worth the sum of 1,000,000.00 GBP (This funds was said to be a winning funds drawn by the Uk National Lottery UK.) so congratulations. As per your question, The funds is expected to be transferred to your country, you cannot keep the funds in our Bank as a current account because you contacted us for the transferring of your funds, so the funds is said to be a transferring funds. In every successful transfer of funds especially in this regards, it is an essentiality that you activate a premium account with the bank that can accommodate and transfer such an amount of money. Transferring the Sum of 1,000,000.00 GBP here in the United Kingdom need utmost care and confidentiality at course of transferring the funds. So you need to be guarded with policy and rules regarding the transfer. By so doing, you are expected to act in accordance to the policy here.
So, to commence with the transferring of your funds, you are expected to activate a Premium account for the transfer. The cost of activating a Premium account is £300 GBP ( Three Hundred Great Britain Pounds Sterling ) which will be added to your account balance.
After the activation of an account, an account will be activated and the logins forwarded to you which enables you login and have access into your account online via our website and you can carry on with the transfer of your funds to any designated account number you deem fit.
So if you are ready to make the payment for the cost of transferring your funds, you are expected to notify this office for the payment details.
Note: The charges cannot be Deducted from your winnings. This is in accordance with section 13(1)(n) of the National Gambling Act as adopted in 1993 and amended on 3RD July 1996 by the constitutional assembly. This is to protect winners and to avoid misappropriation of funds and win and win Situations.
Berwick County Bank United Kingdom, is committed to rendering qualitative services to you, Also you are advice to send us a scanned copy of your driver's license or your international passport for final verification.
Your urgent reply will be most welcome.
Treat with dispatch and reply to our official email address above.
We look forward to serving you better
Best Regards,
Mr. Robert Brown
Customer Care Service
For: Berwick County Bank Plc
The Approved Bank for UK NATIONAL LOTTERY.
Romance Angle
A recent variant is the "Romance Scam" which is a money-for-romance angle. The victim is usually approached on an online dating service and becomes interested in someone who has pictures posted of an attractive person who is not actually the poster. The offending party may claim to be interested in meeting the victim, but needs some cash up front in order to book the plane, hotel room, and other expenses. In other cases, they may claim they're trapped in a foreign country and need assistance to return, to escape imprisonment by corrupt local officials, to pay for medical expenses due to an illness contracted abroad, and so on. As with other variants, the money is usually requested to be sent via Western Union, and the scammer always seems to come up with additional reasons for requesting more funds. They may involve a third party involved to "assist" in getting the money. If the money is not received they may emotionally manipulate the victim to secure it. This type of scam also frequently originates in Russia or Ukraine as well as Nigeria.
Some Tips to Avoid the Advanced Fee Schemes:
- If the offer of an "opportunity" appears too good to be true, it probably is. Follow common business practice. For example, legitimate business is rarely conducted in cash on a street corner.
- Know who you are dealing with. If you have not heard of a person or company that you intend to do business with, learn more about them. Depending on the amount of money that you intend to spend, you may want to visit the business location, check with the Better Business Bureau, or consult with your bank, an attorney, or the police.
- Make sure you fully understand any business agreement that you enter into. If the terms are complex, have them reviewed by a competent attorney.
- Be wary of businesses that operate out of post office boxes or mail drops and do not have a street address, or of dealing with persons who do not have a direct telephone line, who are never "in" when you call, but always return your call later.
- Be wary of business deals that require you to sign nondisclosure or no circumvention agreements that are designed to prevent you from independently verifying the bona fides of the people with whom you intend to do business. Con artists often use no circumvention agreements to threaten their victims with civil suit if they report their losses to law enforcement.
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