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Advance Fee Fraud (419 Fraud)

Introduction

Welcome to the latest section of my Celtnet Information site. This section of the site deals with various internet scams — how to spot them and how to avoid them. Many of these types of scam are perpetrated over the internet and quite a number are easy to spot though the scamsters are becoming more sophisticated.

I'm going to start with an increasing nuisance: the Advance Fee Fraud, also known as the Nigerian Letter, and the 419 fraud. This is a variant of the Spanish Prisoner confidence trick.

The 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. The 419 scam originated in the early 1990s as the oil-based economy of Nigeria went downhill. 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. Early variants were often sent via letter, fax, or even Telex. The spread of email and easy access to email-harvesting software made the cost of sending scam letters through the Internet extremely cheap. While various figures claim that the 419 scam employs as many as 250,000 people in Nigeria, in reality it has often been linked to small organized gangs, who often work together, both in western cities and in Nigeria. In recent years, the 419 scam has spurred imitations from other locations in Africa and Eastern Europe. The '419' refers to the Nigerian origins of the scam, in that it refers to a specific article of the Nigerian Criminal Code (part of Chapter 38: "Obtaining Property by false pretences; Cheating") dealing with fraud.

How it Works

The scam begins when the 'investor' is contacted; typically with an offer such as: 'A A rich person from the needy country needs to discreetly move money abroad, would it be possible to use your account?' and sums in the millions of dollars are named. The investor is promised a large share of this money (generally 30–40% of the total) The proposed deal is often presented as a "harmless" white-collar crime, in order to dissuade participants from later contacting the authorities. Similarly, the money is often said to be the embezzled funds of a recently deposed or killed dictator. The operation is professionally organized in Nigeria, with offices, working fax numbers, and often contacts at government offices. The investor who attempts to research the background of the offer will often find that all pieces fit perfectly together.

If the investor ('mark' is probably a better term though) agrees to the deal the will first send several documents bearing official government stamps, seals etc. Delays are then introduced usually of the form of '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 something similar. More delays and more additional costs are added, always keeping the promise of an imminent large transfer alive. 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.

Whatever the communications and the agreements made the money transfer never happens.

Inheritance Scam

A recent development and variant on this cam is the Inheritance Scam. An email will be sent purporting to be from a lawyer representing the estate of some long-lost relative the victim never knows he or she had (the victim's surname will be inserted into the e-mail message) who perished along with his or her family in a car or airplane accident a short period of time ago (usually a few months). The scammer will claim to have gone to a lot of trouble to find the victim in order to give him or her a share of the millions of dollars available if the victim will forward his or her bank account information to the scammer.

To show you examples of these scams in action here's an email I recently received:

Scam email starts:

From: aruna_33xkenta@hotmail.com
Subject: WAITING TO HEAR FROM YOU.
Date: 18 April 2007 15:41:54 BDT
Reply-To: arunakenta@yahoo.fr

DR. ARUNA KENTA,
HEAD AUDIT AND INVESTIGATION UNIT,
BANK OF AFRICA (B.O.A),
ABIDJAN, COTE D' IVOIRE.

Dear Friend,

I am the head, audit and investigation department of BANK OF AFRICA (B.O.A)I am writing to seek your assistance of a very urgent and confidential transaction. In my department we discovered an abandoned sum of ($30M US dollars million US DOLLARS) ,in an account that belongs to one of our foreign customer who died alongside his entire family in November 1999 in a plane crash involving Egyptian Airline flight 990.The link below contains information about the plane crash:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/502503.stm .

This money is supposed to be claimed by the next of kin of the deceased customer as indicated in our banking guidelines but unfortunately we learnt that all his supposed next of kin or relation died alongside with him at the plane crash leaving nobody behind for the claim. It is therefore upon this discovery that I and other officials in my department now decided to make this business proposal to you to release the money to you as the next of kin or relation to the deceased for safety and subsequent disbursement since nobody is coming for it and we do not want this money to go into the Bank treasury as unclaimed Bill.

The Banking law and guideline here stipulates that if such money remained unclaimed after EIGHT years, the money will be transferred into the Bank treasury as unclaimed fund.The request of foreigner as next of kin in this business is occasioned by the fact that the customer was a foreigner and an Ivoirian cannot stand as next of kin to a foreigner.

We agree that 30 % of this money will be for you as foreign partner, in respect to the provision of a foreign account, 10 % will be set aside for expenses incurred during the business and 60 % would be for ;me and my colleagues. There after I and my colleagues will visit your country for disbursement according to the percentages indicated. Therefore to enable the immediate transfer of this fund to you as arranged, you must apply first to the bank as relations or next of kin of the deceased indicating your bank name, your bank account number, your private telephone and fax number for easy and effective communication and location where in the money will be remitted .

Upon receipt of your reply, I will send to you by fax or email the text of the application. I will not fail to bring to your notice that this transaction is hitch free and that you should not entertain any atom of fear as all required arrangements have been made for the transfer .

Please call me immediately as soon as you receive this letter on my private phone number ,(00225-06392769) for confirmation and further clarifications. Trusting to hear from you immediately.

NB: Please reply to my private email address ----- arunakenta@yahoo.fr . Yours faithfully,

DR. ARUNA KENTA,
Head Audit and Investigation Unit,
BANK OF AFRICA (B.O.A).

_________________________________________________________________
MSN Hotmail sur i-mode™ : envoyez et recevez des e-mails depuis votre
téléphone portable ! http://www.msn.fr/hotmailimode/

Scam email ends

As you can see this email fits the pattern of a classic 'Inheritance scam'. But let's examine this email in more detail. First it's sent from a yahoo account (which is second worst next to hotmail and is preferred in West Africa) which is never a good sign. If this was a genuine email then it would come from a company account especially as it's from the Bank of Africa. Of course, if queried the argument woud be that this is a private transaction, kept off the bank's books. Next we only have a generic 'Dear Friend' introduction. Again, if this was legitimate it would be addressed to you directly.

Then there's the request to reply to the sender's private email with details that include bank details. So this is a combined phishing exercise for bank details as well as a 419 fraud.

Moreover, when I looked at the headers for this email and the originating IP adddress was: 41.207.201.217. If you do an IP lookup on this address you get the host as: Adsl-41-207-201-217.aviso.ci. So the email originated from avisio.ci. Avisio is one of the Côte D'Ivoire's largest internet cafe companies. So this email is coming from an internet cafe!

So that's the first kind of email scam. The next email is a more classic 419 scam:

Scam email starts:

From: info5292house@easymail.hu
Subject: ATM CONTRACT RESOLUTION UNIT
Date: 3 May 2007 05:16:44 BDT
To: info5292house@easymail.hu
Reply-To: info5292house@easymail.hu

                  ATM CONTRACT RESOLUTION UNIT
                  FEDERAL REPUBLIC OF NIGERIA
                  COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN PAYMENT
                (RESOLUTIONPANEL ON CONTRACT PAYMENT)
                       IKOYI-LAGOS NIGERIA


                        Our Ref: FGN /SNT/STB

ATTN:  BENEFICIARY,

THIS IS TO OFFICIALLY INFORM YOU THAT WE HAVE VERIFIED YOUR CONTRACT/INHERITANCE FILE

AND FOUND OUT THAT WHY YOU HAVE NOT RECEIVED YOUR PAYMENT IS BECAUSE YOU HAVE NOT

FULFILLED THE OBLIGATIONS GIVEN TO YOU IN RESPECT OF YOUR CONTRACT/INHERITANCE PAYMENT.

SECONDLY WE HAVE BEEN INFORMED THAT YOU ARE STILL DEALING WITH THE NONE OFFICIALS IN

THE BANK YOUR ENTIRE ATTEMPT TO SECURE THE RELEASE OF THE FUND TO YOU. WE WISH TO

ADVISE YOU THAT SUCH AN ILLEGAL ACT LIKE THESE HAVE TO STOP IF YOU WISH TO RECEIVE YOUR

PAYMENT SINCE WE HAVE DECIDED TO BRING A SOLUTION TO YOUR PROBLEM. RIGHT NOW WE HAVE

ARRANGED YOUR PAYMENT THROUGH OUR SWIFT CARD PAYMENT CENTER ASIA PACIFIC THAT IS THE

LATEST INSTRUCTION FROM MR. PRESIDENT, CHIEF OLUSEGUN OBASANJO (GCFR) FEDERAL REPUBLIC

OF NIGERIA. AND THE UNITED STATES FBI.THIS CARD CENTER WILL SEND YOU AN ATM CARD WHICH

YOU WILL USE TO WITHDRAW YOUR MONEY IN ANY ATM MACHINE IN ANY PART OF THE WORLD, BUT

THE MAXIMUM IS TWENTY  THOUSAND DOLLARS PER DAY, SO IF YOU LIKE TO RECEIVE YOUR FUND

THIS WAY PLEASE LET US KNOW BY CONTACTING THE  FOREIGN OPERATIONAL UNIT OF AFRI BANK

NIGERIA PLC, CARD PAYMENT CENTER MRS. CARO OGO ON HER EMAIL

ADDRESS:caro_ogo002@yahoo.se   Direct Openfax: +234-802-592-5403, AND ALSO SEND THE

FOLLOWING INFORMATION:

1. YOUR FULL NAME
2. PHONE AND FAX NUMBER
3. ADDRESS WERE YOU WANT THEM TO SEND THE ATM CARD
4. YOUR AGE AND CURRENT OCCUPATION

THE ATM CARD PAYMENT CENTER HAS BEEN MANDATED TO ISSUE OUT USD5.3MILLION AS FULL

PAYMENT FOR THIS FISCAL YEAR 2006/2007. ALSO FOR YOUR INFORMATION, YOU HAVE TO STOP ANY

FURTHER COMMUNICATION WITH ANY OTHER PERSON(S) OR OFFICE(S) TO AVOID ANY HITCHES IN

RECEIVING YOUR PAYMENT. FOR ORAL DISCUSSION, CALL AND EMAIL ME BACK AS SOON AS YOU

RECEIVE THIS IMPORTANT MESSAGE FOR FURTHER DIRECTION AND ALSO UPDATE ME ON ANY

DEVELOPMENT FROM THE ABOVE-MENTIONED OFFICE.

NOTE THAT BECAUSE OF IMPOSTORS, WE HEREBY ISSUED YOU OUR CODE OF CONDUCT, WHICH IS

(ATM-822) SO YOU HAVE TO INDICATE THIS CODE WHEN CONTACTING THE CARD CENTER BY USING IT

AS YOUR SUBJECT.
REGARDS,

Dr ken Nnamani
ATM CONTRACT RESOLUTION UNIT
(Federal Republic of Nigeria)


Scam email ends

This is a completely unsolicited mail in that I never made any contacts to this person or organization. Basically the email is depending on greed to get the ball (and communication) going. Alarm bells should already be ringing, however, as this email comes from easymail.hu which is a Hungarian-based email resender. This is a great way of cloaking an email. As the original IP would undoubtedly reveal an internet cafe in Lagos, Nigeria. But if an email originates from an email resender beware!

Anyway, just the fact that this email is coming from Nigeria should be more than enough to make you instantly delete this message. Yes, it's a classic 419 Fraud just couched in more contemporary language. If you were to reply you would find out that it would eventually cost you a lot of money in your attempt to receive the ATM card and if it did arrive it would, at best, be worthless at worst it would turn out to be stolen. Another give-away here is poor grammar. This is a common feature of these scam emails: espite the supposed formal titles (diplomats and bankers are frequent), emails sent by such scammers will often clearly reflect an inability to write in proper English; serious spelling and grammatical mistakes are quite common.