This just in….
Australian victims of Nigerian online scams are greedy and should be jailed along with the Africans who relieved them of their cash, according to High Commissioner Sunday Olu Agb (Nigerian Envoy to Canberra).
“People who send their money are as guilty as those who are asking them to send the money,”
He said media coverage of Nigerian scams had given the corruption-plagued country “a bad image.” Agbi was responding to a police report that said Australians were losing A$36 Million (about $US 31,000,000) to online scams.He complained that “those who want to transact business with us are always very suspicious”.
read more in the report by the Sydney Morning Herald
I agree that greed is what drives a large number of scams - as a social engineering construct, it works very well - the knowledge that the actions that they are taking are at best immoral, at worst criminal is normally tempered by the displacement of the crime (eg. another continent) and also the large amounts of money involved and the sense that no-one will ever find out.
When the scam is exposed, the common pattern or events is disbelief, then rage and then either shame/penitence or denial (The Sunk Cost Fallacy?). The last is always the most destructive - This is exploited by scammers who, when the victim has realized his errors, will offer more scams, purportedly to enable the victim to recover some of his lost money. I have seen this many times and the 419 type scammers are the experts at this type of ’scam cascade’.
Greed, Opportunity and Low Risk drives all financial crimes - an email arriving with a request from an African official to help him ‘move’ some money out of his country to yours is just the ‘carrot’ that many people need.
From: Lady Rebecca Thatcher. No:36 Old Shrewberry Street, London England.
Beloved,i am Lady Rebecca Thatcher, suffering from cancerous ailment..I used to be married to Sir Jeremy Thatcher an Englishman who is dead
and resting peacefully. My husband was into private practice all his life
before he passed. Our life together as man and wife lasted for three decades without offsprings. My husband died after a protracted illness in an accident he got from Africa while on humanitarian duties.
My husband,while he was alive made a vow to uplift the down-trodden and the less-privileged individuals as he had passion for persons who can not help
themselves due to physical disability or financial predicament.I can adduce this to the fact that he needed a Child from the marriage, which never came.
When my late husband was alive he deposited the sum of Twenty Million Pounds which were derived from his vast estates and investment incapital market with his bank here in UK. Presently, this money is still with the Bank. Recently, my Doctor told me that I have limited days to live due to the cancerous problems I am suffering from.
Though what bothers me most is the stroke that I have in addition to the cancer. With this hard reality that has befallen me, I have decided
to donate this fund to you and want you to use this gift which comes from my husbands effort to fund the upkeep of widows, widowers, orphans,
destitute, the down-trodden, physically challenged children, barren-women and persons who prove to be genuinely handicapped financially.
I took this decision because I do not have any child that will inherit this money and my husbands relatives are bourgeois and very wealthy persons and I do not want my husbands hard earned money to be misused or
invested into ill perceived ventures. I do not want this money to be misused hence the reason for taking this bold decision. I am not afraid
of death hence I know where I am going. I do not need any telephone communication in this regard due to my deteriorating health and because of
the presence of my husbands relatives around me. I do not want them to know about this development because i want the money used for the Less
Previledged.
My happiness is that I lived a life worthy of emulation. Please assure me that you will act just as I have stated herein.
Hope to hear from you soon.
You can contact me through my personal email address at:
rebeccathatcher008@yahoo.com
A former Michigan county treasurer was arrested last week for allegedly embezzling more than US$1.2 million in public funds, which he sent to a Nigerian fraud scam.
Thomas Katona, 56, the former treasurer of Alcona County, was arraigned in a district court on 17 January on eight counts of embezzlement by a public official and one count of forgery, according to a report in the Oscoda Press.
Held in lieu of US$1 million bond, Katona faces a maximum of 14 years in prison. He is scheduled to appear in court for a preliminary hearing on 31 January.
An audit of county finances by the Michigan Treasury Department revealed a shortage of more than US$1.2 million, state Attorney General Mike Cox told the Press.
County employees were notified last November by National City Bank that Katona had allegedly made unauthorized wire transfers of county funds, according to the press report.
Katona was first elected Alcona County treasurer in 1993. He was removed from the position two months ago by the Alcona County Board of Commissioners.
If you can wait while the ad plays, this is a very interesting backgrounder for the ‘Nigerian’ scam called ‘Black Money’. In this scam, suitcases full of black paper are sold, along with a very expensive chemical which they claim will wash the black ink off the money, returning it to it’s full value.
They claim that the cash has been marked to make it non-legal tender or to hide it from customs.
The father of a suitor of Chelsea Clinton (Ed Mezvinsky) has fallen foul of this scam himself, and the ensuing race to raise cash has landed him in jail.
Mezvinsky’s stories sound fantastic. At one point, he says, he found himself in Africa gazing on an open suitcase filled with paper shaped like money, although the bills were black.
“That’s the way they would hide it,” he says. “The man later came out with a chemical, threw it on the money, and it all turned to $100 bills. He gave me 10 to have them tested back home. And they were real.”
Some of the African schemes were not far removed from the classic, laughable Nigerian scams often run through the Internet - seeking victims with financial backing to extract millions out of bogus accounts. Others were sophisticated oil prospects.
Read the rest here
I had to break some bad news to a very nice, normal, professional lady in San Jose, California today. I got possession of a scammer’s email account and read with horror the scam unfolding. The story was the same as usual, some good Christian person with a large fortune wanting it to go to a good home.
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