The Spanish Prisoner (#419)

I read a story in a recent New Yorker about some American who had become yet another victim of the “Spanish Prisoner” scam. The poor fellow lost $80,000 or so and incriminated himself into the bargain, all in the pursuit of an immense pile of imaginary money.

The Spanish Prisoner scam, also known as the 419 scheme or the Advance Fee Fraud scheme, is based on the simple idea of promising you a share in a fortune, and gradually extorting fees from you as you pursue it. There are legal versions of the scam, adverts saying “you have won a laptop”—and you have, but your collecting it is going to cost you the price of it.

Nowadays the Spanish Prisoner scam usually begins with an email from Nigeria, which may read something like this:

Request for Urgent Business Relationship

I must solicit your strictest confidence in this transaction, as by virtue of its nature, it is utterly confidential and ‘top secret’. I have confidence of your ability and reliability to prosecute a transaction of this great magnitude involving a pending transaction requiring maximum confidence.

We are top Nigerian IT analysts whose successful white paper work and business advice to IT end users has resulted in our amassing $451,000,000 (Four Hundred and Fifty One million US dollars) in funds which are presently trapped in Nigeria. In order to commence this business, we solicit your assistance to enable us transfer into your account the said trapped funds. We will also send you a free white paper that evaluates the upcoming Vista version of Windows.

Unfortunately we cannot get our hands on the money directly as we wrote a negative review of Red Hat Linux and we are now on the run from a vicious bunch of Nigerian Open Source flamers who have caused us to relocate to Canada. Hence we are writing you this email. We have agreed to share the money thus; 20% to you, the account owner, 70% for us (the analysts), 10% to be used in settling taxation and all local and foreign expenses.

Please note that this transaction is 100% safe and we hope to commence the transfer latest seven (7) banking days from the date of the receipt of the following information … etc. etc.

Yours faithfully,

Dr Notta Scamsta

Note; please quote this reference number (mq/s/05/06) in all your responses.

When you respond by suggesting that there’s something fishy about this email (do Nigerian technology analysts really earn that little?) The fraudsters start furnishing you proof in the form of scanned forged documentation, occasionally asking for money to bribe the odd official here and there. Bizarrely, some apparently intelligent people fall for it.

Another version of the scam is the unexpected lottery win. You get an email telling you that you have won some huge prize in a lottery because your email address was entered free into the lottery as a result of you registering at some web site. Try to get the money and advanced fees get requested.

However, it’s called the 419 scam, because 419 is the section of the Criminal Code of Nigeria that covers this form of confidence trick. Apparently Nigeria is the prime source for 419 emails and it has been suggested that 419 is also the third to fifth largest industry in Nigeria. The US Treasury Department estimates that these scams cost people in the United States about $100 million a year. Apparently the odd CEO, corporate VP and even a US ex-congressman have fallen for this scam. Some office workers have embezzled thousands to feed the 419ers. Many people have been ruined and, apparently, 15 people have been murdered as part of these scams.

A 419 Coalition has formed itself on the web. It is an electronically linked organization of people that are actively fighting the scam, one third of whom (it claims) are victims of the scam. In the opinion of the 419 Coalition, the elites from which successive Governments of Nigeria have been drawn ARE the 419 Scammers. That might explain why only a dozen or so individuals have ever been charged of 419 crimes in Nigeria and why none of the money ever seems to get recovered.

The 419ers don’t have it all their own way. A web site called 419Eater.com gives you detailed instructions on how to scam the scammers; wasting their time, causing them expense, and getting them to reveal who they are. Odd as it may seem the scammed often have no idea at all who it was that scammed them. They yielded up their money to an email writer…

If these sorry victims will send money to an email writer, then why not to a blogger?

I’ve been meaning to tell you that I have a large amount of money ($31,415,900), which has accumulated from all those Google Ads that appear at the side of the page. Unfortunately it is trapped in an eBay account to which I have lost the password. If someone would just send me some money to spend on big houses, long holidays, Ferraris and loose women, to tide me over for the next few days, etc. etc.