What is an advance fee scam (or Nigerian scam)?
The Nigerian scam or 419 scam or African scam is the name of a set of advance fee scams widely practiced in West Africa.
History
So-called Nigerian scams actually appeared as early as the 16th century in Spain with the “Spanish prisoner” scam. It consisted of sending a letter to a wealthy person explaining that a young Spanish noblewoman was being held prisoner. The recipient of the letter was promised that by paying the ransom, the lady would be freed and would come to marry him.
This type of scam gained popularity in the 19th century following the disorders born of the Revolution. Vidocq then made famous what became known as the “Jerusalem letters” in his book “Les Voleurs”.
Nigerian scams, as such, begin in the 1980s with letters in which it is a question of getting large sums of money out of Nigeria with the help of the victim. They developed particularly from the end of the 90s thanks to the massive use of emails, which offered a faster and inexpensive way to write letters. They took on the name “419 scam” due to the Nigerian law article targeting this type of crime.
In the 2000s, Nigerian scams were practiced in much of West Africa, but also in Asia, Eastern Europe, and to a lesser extent in other countries around the world.
Implementation
A typical Nigerian scam has 3 steps: sending a message, interacting with the victim, getting the money back. Some lottery, sentimental, classified ad, or employment scams are sometimes considered Nigerian scams but we will not cover them here.
The messages
The messages in this scam are always unsolicited; there are multiple variations. But they usually have one or more of the following characteristics:
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a very large amount of money is at stake (more than 100,000 euros)
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for various reasons, the victim must step in to help with the transfer
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a high commission is promised to the victim for his or her assistance
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they are long enough to detail the story the victim will believe
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it involves businessmen or statesmen who are particularly wealthy
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there is a notion of urgency
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the transaction has a confidential nature
The pretexts given may be:
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funds to be transferred abroad
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a locked estate requiring outside intervention
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problems with currency conversion
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the need to pay small fees that are momentarily impossible for the sender to pay
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the need for a middleman to pay money discreetly to a third party
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more or less zany ideas, such as, an African astronaut stuck in space! 🙂
The exchanges with the victim
The purpose of these exchanges is initially to reassure the victim by giving him or her elements that are supposed to prove the reality of the problem: official letters, identity documents, copies of bank documents, even checks. These documents are either stolen or forged.
When the target of the scam seems “ripe”, it becomes a matter of unexpected fees to be paid and/or documents to be provided.
The recovery of money
Money can be collected by scammers in 2 ways:
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the payment of fictitious “fees” by the victim
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the theft of money from the victim’s account via bank data recovery
In the first case, payments are usually requested in an anonymous and irreversible form: Western Union, MoneyGram, PCS codes.
Next part of the scam
Once the victim has paid, scammers often continue to try to get additional money. This can be through new fees (which are always supposed to be the last) or by offering to get the victim’s lost money back via an interpol scam.
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