“Hello, I’m Mrs. Mugabe and I want to offer you $1 million…” You know what I am talking about I presume? The “Nigerian” email scams which regularly appear in your inbox, offering you a chance to have a share in millions of dollars left by some displaced dictator, dead explorer, long lost relative or whoever. Don’t tell me you’ve never received one?! Well, just in case you haven’t, here’s how they work: -
Someone emails you a rather pathetic offer they presume you can’t refuse. Often they refer to you in a most friendly manner and make some obscure reference about how they got your email address, implying that you may perhaps know them. The offer is usually a share in money, gold, or gems, which the person asking needs you to receive and look after for a while. In order to do this you need to give them a number of your personal details, and usually send them a small amount of cash for them to process some paperwork to get the large amount of loot released into your care.
If we haven’t received such email scams ourselves we’ve certainly heard about them – and therefore we tend to assume that everyone is immune to being taken in nowadays. However, as I will demonstrate, there are those who have now taken this scamming model a significant step further, who are now robbing innocent people around the world of significant sums of money, and making otherwise savvy and intelligent people look like absolute idiots. Introducing you to the innocent victims of the new breed of email scam – to highlight how anyone can potentially be taken in, and how you need to ensure your family, friends and fellow expats are forewarned and therefore forearmed against these evil cheats.
All of the scams operate on the same premise that we are all fundamentally greedy and that a number of people will be willing to risk a small amount of money in order to potentially receive a much larger sum of money. It’s a bit like gambling on the stock exchange really! Of course, the scammer makes their money on a volume basis – i.e., send out a few thousand emails every day, and even if only 1% of those receiving the emails bite and send you the $100 you have asked for to enable you to release the non-existent larger sum, you are making decent money.
So far, so bad - but it gets worse. By this point many of you will be asking why I am going on about something we all know about and know how to avoid. But I’ll be honest, out of my relatively small circle of acquaintances abroad, I know of 3 people who have been taken by these guys - 3 people with a decent standard of education who should have known better.
And as I said, it gets worse. The scammers have realised that we don’t all want lots of cash from old dictators and we don’t all have long lost relatives that we can be scammed with. So, several of my local colleagues have recently received, (and been taken in by), emails purporting to offer them jobs at large international institutions such as the World Bank and the UN. Of course they are desperate for jobs like these, and the invitations come on headed paper and so on, so they are believable. What’s more, these letters and invitations are being more carefully targeted and sent to those in countries and in positions of employment where they could perhaps one day be offered genuine positions with these organisations. So, disbelief is not having to be suspended very far!
What happens then is that the person being scammed is asked to upfront some money to purchase their visa, or put down a deposit on the flat that has been found for them in New York or Washington, and, having sent the money, the scammer promptly disappears. I know of two guys here who have been taken for $500 each in just such a scam, but worse than that, in preparation for their imminent departure for their dream job at the UN, each gave up their flat and job and prepared their family for the fact they were going.
Bearing in mind that the monthly minimum wage here is $100 - you must know how much this scam cost these guys. And they are not alone.
What the scammers are doing is despicable. OK, when they are taking a few hundred dollars from someone who can afford it and who should know better then perhaps we can laugh behind our hands in a knowing way because we would not be fooled would we? But what is despicable is when the scammers take money from those who can barely afford it by holding out a believable, plausible dream opportunity, (both the guys I mentioned who were taken in by the UN scam were qualified and could potentially have been offered such jobs).
So, the purpose of this article was to highlight the increasing sophistication of the scammers, the fact that they are targeting expats in certain locations overseas, and to ask you to make sure your colleagues and fellow expats really do understand about these emails and these scams. You’d be surprised how many people aren’t yet aware of all the odd things that fly around in the Internet ether and who still believe whatever they read on email. In fact, how many times have people who should know better from among your friends sent you an email in which Bill Gates is going to give you a laptop for example!
Finally, if you want a bit of a laugh about this depressing subject, go to www.whatsthebloodypoint.com where a group of avid anti-scammers give the “Nigerians” a run for their money, in some cases even managing to get the scammers to send them money!
