The Nigerian Scam
It goes something like this. Someone has their hands on a huge sum of money and they need your help to move it out of their country and into yours. For your assistance, they will give you a percentage of this huge sum of money. The document is often in poor English, complete with spelling mistakes (in an effort to make you feel safe and in a position of intellectual advantage).
This has been called the Nigerian scam because the original scam was run from Nigeria and most still are. It began with snail mail letters that used to pop up in the mail boxes of potential victims, often businesses. Then it moved to faxes and it is now being transmitted via email. It originally had a person who handled money for a corrupt political regime who was willing to share his 30 million dollars (give or take) of embezzled funds with anyone who could help him with the financial arrangements/bribes necessary to move the funds out of Nigeria. The reward offered was about ten percent - you could net an easy 3 million dollars. Of course, even if this were a true scenario and not a scam, it would still be illegal and unethical. So it isn't easy to feel sorry for those unfortunates who responded to this request from a total stranger who had no way of knowing who the potential responders were. But, those that responded ended up paying thousands and even up to hundreds of thousands of dollars in "fees" and "bribes" in the hopes of receiving their share of the multi-million dollar prize. One very sad victim wasn't even the owner of a business but was either a secretary or accounting clerk - she "borrowed" substantial funds from the company she worked for in the hopes of paying the money back before anyone noticed it was missing. There was no payout for her and, I believe, she has been arrested and fired for her own added illegal activities.
One word of caution. Note the basic format of the scam. Note also that the requests are often simple and in poor English. Note these things because the Nigerian scam has been evolving and now has clever new ploys to net the more ethical persons hoping for a nice windfall. Several months ago I received an email that claimed to be from a wealthy Christian woman who sought to leave a country with a large sum of money, many millions of dollars, where she was being persecuted. Again, the document was in poor English and offered a reward of about 10 percent to anyone who would assist her with the necessary fees/bribes/etc. to help her bring her large sum of money out of her country of origin and into yours. The ethical dilemma was removed and replaced with a sympathetic figure in need of help.
If anyone out there in the Blogosphere has save the text of any of the Nigerian scams, I would greatly appreciate having this text in a comment to my Blog for others to see.
This has been called the Nigerian scam because the original scam was run from Nigeria and most still are. It began with snail mail letters that used to pop up in the mail boxes of potential victims, often businesses. Then it moved to faxes and it is now being transmitted via email. It originally had a person who handled money for a corrupt political regime who was willing to share his 30 million dollars (give or take) of embezzled funds with anyone who could help him with the financial arrangements/bribes necessary to move the funds out of Nigeria. The reward offered was about ten percent - you could net an easy 3 million dollars. Of course, even if this were a true scenario and not a scam, it would still be illegal and unethical. So it isn't easy to feel sorry for those unfortunates who responded to this request from a total stranger who had no way of knowing who the potential responders were. But, those that responded ended up paying thousands and even up to hundreds of thousands of dollars in "fees" and "bribes" in the hopes of receiving their share of the multi-million dollar prize. One very sad victim wasn't even the owner of a business but was either a secretary or accounting clerk - she "borrowed" substantial funds from the company she worked for in the hopes of paying the money back before anyone noticed it was missing. There was no payout for her and, I believe, she has been arrested and fired for her own added illegal activities.
One word of caution. Note the basic format of the scam. Note also that the requests are often simple and in poor English. Note these things because the Nigerian scam has been evolving and now has clever new ploys to net the more ethical persons hoping for a nice windfall. Several months ago I received an email that claimed to be from a wealthy Christian woman who sought to leave a country with a large sum of money, many millions of dollars, where she was being persecuted. Again, the document was in poor English and offered a reward of about 10 percent to anyone who would assist her with the necessary fees/bribes/etc. to help her bring her large sum of money out of her country of origin and into yours. The ethical dilemma was removed and replaced with a sympathetic figure in need of help.
If anyone out there in the Blogosphere has save the text of any of the Nigerian scams, I would greatly appreciate having this text in a comment to my Blog for others to see.
posted by Faith at
6/16/2006 01:49:00 PM
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