by Scott Pape - August 19th 2006
I once convinced an older workmate that the reason he kept receiving emails about cheap Viagra was that someone somewhere knew his secret.
I explained that, until he approached his problem like a man, this cyber-psychic would continue to clog up his inbox – ditto for the herbal pills that purported to help him “grow”.
Of course it wasn’t long before he realised that they were nothing more than junk emails we all must wade through while sipping our first Nescafe of the day. Still, for a brief moment I sadistically had him, hook line and sinker.
I’ve never understood why anyone would send an email selling commercial quantities of a sexual stimulant, yet someone must be buying it or else they wouldn’t bother bombarding us (damn you, Shane Warne).
Stranger still are the obviously dodgy money-scamming spam emails – lottery wins, million-dollar opportunities and dubious money-making schemes. Surely people aren’t stupid enough to fall for these, are they?
Queensland cut to the quick
According to the authorities, Queenslanders are being stung to the tune of $300,000 a month on email scams.
It’s such a problem that the Queensland police force and Western Union have launched a joint initiative to combat consumer fraud.
Queensland police Det-Insp. Brian Hay from the fraud and corporate crime group is quick to point out that these scams suck in a broad range of backgrounds.
“We’ve seen financial advisers, lawyers and university professors being conned in this scam,” he said. “One high-net-worth individual had unwittingly given scammers $2.2 million over the past two years.”
Bear in mind we’re talking only about Queensland (simply because it’s the only state that has documented the scams), and that these are just the people who have put their hand up and admitted they’ve fallen for one. How many others are simply too embarrassed to come forward?
Know it when you see it
Commonly referred to as the Nigerian scam because of its origins, it’s been around in various forms for decades.
Consumers are written a personal email from someone in Nigeria (although it can be from anywhere) who has found, hidden or stolen millions of dollars in a bank account that they need to transfer.
The scammer then offers to share the millions if the consumer will allow them to deposit the money in their account. To do this they need to provide necessary ID and bank account numbers (which are then often used for identity fraud).
Just before the money is to be transferred, a problem occurs which must be overcome – usually in the form of a bribe(s).
If the scammer has played his emails well, the consumer will happily pay tens of thousands of dollars for the bribe in order to release the millions: after all, in their mind they’ll still be well ahead in the long run.
If the scammers really know what they’re doing they can get the consumer to keep paying over and over again – which is why it’s also called the advance-fee fraud.
It all sounds a little pie-in-the-sky, doesn’t it? Just what possesses people to send their hard-earned money off to people they don’t know who live in a West African country they know nothing about?
What spell do these scammers cast?
To answer that question this week I sought out the scammers so I could share my experiences with you.
Sound familiar?
A good example of how the sting is set up came when I received an email from a gent going by the name of Mr Kim Hamid Aziz, who claimed to be a former Iraqi military leader who had lost his job about the same time as his boss did.
Aziz went on to explain that he was once in charge of purchasing for the Iraqi military and, like all good corrupt officials, had managed to skim $75 million into three bags (in Iraq they pay for things in cash: just ask the AWB) which were now being stored in Spain for safe keeping.
The plan was for me to go over and collect the cash – and keep 25 per cent of the proceeds for my hard work.
Due to space limitations my response to his request, and my correspondence with another scammer, have been posted in their entirety on the Herald Sun website and make for good reading.
Common sense will prevail
Greg Tanzer, executive director of consumer protection at the Australian Securities and Investments Commission says “each year Australians lose millions of dollars to all sorts of scams – email, cold-calling from overseas, unlicensed stockbrokers, phishing emails (particularly those relating to bank fraud) and ponzi (high-return, supposedly secure investment-related schemes.
“The frustrating thing is that they can all be avoided with a bit of common sense.”
In the movie Wall Street, Gordon Gecko says: “A fool and his money are lucky enough to get together in the first place.” Scams target the greedy and the gullible.
The people who lose their money ignore their gut instinct (deep down, everyone knows if something sounds too good to be true it is) and, most important, they ignore the greatest fact-checker of all – Google.
It’s so simple
A 2004 discussion paper from the Australian Institute of Criminology suggests that worldwide advanced-fee fraud generates a massive $5 billion a year for Nigerian nationals alone.
Given that most of the population live in abject poverty – surviving on about $1 a day – it’s not hard to see why these criminals are so intent on spinning us a line.
These scams have been around since the turn of the 19th century, but technology has made it more cost-effective than before to spread them to vast numbers of people.
The cost of sending bulk spam emails is practically zero – although so is typing the words “Nigeria” and “email” into a search engine, which could (but in all likelihood won’t) save people $5 billion next year.
Tread your own path!
news.com.au/heraldsun/business:
How the scam email trail unfolded
Photo: http://www.flickr.com/photos/cannysphotos/2508873859/
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