Costly Compassion

Costly Compassion: Email Scams

During the past couple of months we've noticed an increase in the amount of SCAM email in our inbox. If you've never heard about these letters before, pay close attention — it could save you a lot of money.

Nigerian advance-fee fraud has been around for decades, but it now seems to have reached epidemic proportions. People are receiving dozens of offers a day from supposed Nigerians or West Africans promising big profits in exchange for help moving large sums of money out of their country. Apparently, many compassionate consumers are continuing to fall for the convincing sob stories, the polite language and the unequivocal promise of money.

Here's how it happens. You receive an unsolicited fax, email or letter from Nigeria or another African nation containing either a money laundering or some other proposal. Or you may receive a legal and legitimate business proposal by normal means.

These advance-fee solicitations are scams. The scam artists are playing each and every consumer for a fool. Here's the play:

• You receive an "urgent" business proposal "in strictest confidence" from a Nigerian or West African civil servant /businessman. The sender obtained your name and profile through the Chamber of Commerce or the International Trade Commission.

• Claiming to be Nigerian or West African officials, businesspeople or the surviving spouses of former government honchos, con artists offer to transfer millions of dollars into your bank account in exchange for a small fee. The sender claims to have recently intercepted or been named beneficiary of the proceeds from real estate, oil products, over-invoiced contracts, cargo shipments or other commodities, and needs a foreign partner to assist with laundering the money.

• Since their government/business position prohibits them from opening foreign bank accounts, senders ask you to deposit the sum, usually somewhere between $25-50 million, into your personal account. For your assistance, you will receive between 15-30% of the total, which sits in the Central Bank awaiting transfer.

• If you respond to the initial offer, you may receive "official looking" documents. Typically, you're then asked to provide blank letterhead and your bank account numbers, as well as some money to cover transaction and transfer costs and attorney's fees.

• You may even be encouraged to travel to Nigeria or a border country to complete the transaction. Sometimes, the fraudsters will produce trunks of dyed or stamped money to verify their claims. Inevitably, though, emergencies come up, requiring more of your money and delaying the "transfer" of funds to your account; in the end, there aren't any profits for you to share, and the scam artist has vanished with your money.

Throughout North America, letters concerning a "request for urgent business transaction" are being sent out via mail, email and fax transmission. Email is the preferred method of delivery. These letters are commonly referred to as Nigerian Letter Scams or West African Fraud Letters.

In Canada last year from January 1st to August 31st, Phonebusters received reports from 81 victims of the scam. These victims lost $4,312,852.90. That number increased from the previous year. In 2001, only 22 victims contacted Phonebusters reporting a collective loss of $1,465,655.97.

The RCMP estimates Canadians have lost about $30 million to the scam over the last ten years and reports that about 10,000-15,000 letters have circulated in Canada. And the number of people being contacted continues to grow in 2003.

Don't become a statistic! If you have received an unsolicited letter containing any of these characteristics, you should carefully research available information before conducting a transaction.

The Commercial Crime Sections of the RCMP and your local Better Business Bureau are available for obtaining further information on this topic.

REMEMBER: BE WARY OF LETTERS WHERE "URGENCY AND SECRECY" ARE KEY ELEMENTS.

You can help catch these scammers. Please forward Nigerian/African letters to wafl@phonebusters.com or via fax at (888)654-9426. Please contact Phonebusters by phone at (888)495-8501 if contact has been made with a "Nigerian" representative.

The Phonebusters National Call Centre ('PNCC') is a joint partnership involving the Ontario Provincial Police and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. The PNCC is very interested in receiving copies of any 'new' versions of Nigerian letter scheme, particularly those involving Canadian mailing addresses or telephone numbers. This valuable intelligence information is used to assist in strategic targeting of would be fraudsters.

To reduce the risk of virus transfer, please do not send Nigerian letters as attachments. Instead, either forward the mail message or copy and paste the contents into the mail window and send.

Fax a hardcopy of the to the US Task Force at 202-406-6930 or 202-406-5031, especially any banking data, so that it can be included in the Task Force Database; state what Country you are sending from; and state whether there has been a Loss or there is No Loss.

Or you can email the material to Task Force Main in DC marked Loss or No Loss in the Subject line.

If you have NOT suffered a financial loss, so the matter is not Urgent, you may alternatively SNAIL MAIL the Scam documents you have received to the United States Secret Service, Financial Crimes Division, 419 Task Force, 950 H Street, Washington, DC, 20001-4518, USA. But be sure to mark your documents "No Financial Loss - For Your Database."

If you wish, file a Complaint with the Nigerian Embassy or High Commission in your nation.

If the contact was via email, write their email provider at their "abuse" address (abuse@yahoo.com, abuse@onebox.com etc.) and include the message with its headers; complain about the message; and ask that the account be shut down.

You may also file complaints with watchdog type sevices like Spamcop to try and get the email accounts shut off by whatever Internet Service Provider they are using. Spamcop and other services like it will try to get back to the actual origin of the email, which is often useful in these matters.

Some scammers give different email addresses in the body of their mail than the one they sent from. You should complain to "abuse" at those email providers as well.

If you're tempted to respond to an offer, stop and ask yourself two important questions: Why would a perfect stranger pick you - also a perfect stranger - to share a fortune with? And why would you share your personal or business information, including your bank account numbers or your company letterhead, with someone you don't know?

The U.S. Department of State cautions against travelling to the destination mentioned in the letters. According to State Department reports, people who have responded to these "advance-fee" solicitations have been beaten, subjected to threats and extortion, and in some cases, murdered.

The five rules for doing business with Nigeria are:

1. NEVER pay anything up front for ANY reason.
2. NEVER extend credit for ANY reason.
3. NEVER do ANYTHING until their cheque clears.
4. NEVER expect ANY help from the Nigerian Government.
5. NEVER rely on YOUR Government to bail you out.

For more information on Advanced Fee Fraud Letters please see the below links.

http://www.rcmp-grc.gc.ca/scams/nigerian_e.htm
http://home.rica.net/alphae/419coal/index.htm
www.ftc.gov

For a general list of Scams visit the RCMP website at http://www.rcmp-grc.gc.ca/scams/scams_e.htm

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