You are a millionaire now!Cyber Scam
By Kanad Nandi Majumder
Since the advent of Internet, e-mails have become the most convenient form of communication. But did you know that some of the e-mails can come up with nasty surprises?The 419 Scam has baffled even the US Secret Service which has termed it as a growing epidemic. So much is the effect of this scam mail that every two days, one gets an indirect 419 Scam mail announcing that he is the lucky winner of some million dollars. Once in the trap, it is very difficult to get out of it. A survey reveals that this particular scam is worth $ 200 million and the people behind it are as dangerous and criminal as your master forgers back home. It also calls it the fastest growing epidemic.The hoax e-mail, which has many variants, appears to be sent out by a deposed African official or a relative of one. The message asks its recipients for assistance in transferring or handling a sizeable sum of money, offering a corresponding share for such service.This scam e-mail has victimised many individuals, some of whom have given up millions of dollars and their personal safety for lure of promised lucre. Recently, I received an e-mail in which I was congratulated on having won £1,600,000 Pounds. The congratulations came from a valid company registered with a London address and with a list of phone numbers, an agent and also a lawyer in case I needed to know how to get the massive lottery money through insured bank drafts. The content of the email was “It is expected that you would forward this information as soon as possible to enable us attend to your winnings. Once we confirm your information, your payments would be processed. After you have sent down this information, a certificate will be prepared for you. This is to be your proof of winning. Be advised that your winnings would be paid to you in instalments of £1,600,000 Pounds. You are advised to keep your winning numbers secret to avoid unscrupulous elements from taking advantage of the situation. Once again, congratulations.”In order to claim the money, I was given option of sending courier charges of 650.00 Pounds (1,150 Dollars) through Western Union. All attempts to tell the agent that he should deduct this amount from the overall draft that he would be sending were not entertained.Thousands of people receive 419 e-mails every month. Although the Nigerian Government claims to be cracking down on them, it is commonly believed that they are actually protecting the culprits. The reasons? Well, to start with it is alleged that it is the Nigerian Government officials themselves who are the kingpins. Secondly, the 419 scam is estimated to be the third largest source of revenue for the Nigerian economy. This is just too large a business for it to crack down on.The Nigerian Scam letters generally fall into one of these four categories:1. I am a Government Minister in Nigeria. I have been accumulating funds in a secret bank account by over-invoicing contracts awarded by the Government of Nigeria. I now have $18.5 million in the account. I will send the money to you and, for performing this service; I will give you part of the money when I get out of Nigeria.2. I am the son of the President or Chief or Leader of an African country. My father was killed in a war/uprising. The new Government of my country is trying to get the money my father left for his family. We have only $18.5 million left. I want to send you this money to hold for me. 3. My father was a rich diamond merchant/gold miner/farmer. He was killed in a land dispute. We have only $18.5 million left. I want to send you the money to hold until we get out.4. I am a branch bank manager of a bank in Nigeria. One of the depositors in my bank was killed along with his entire family in a car accident on Zimbabwe Road. I have discovered that my client had $18.5 million on deposit with the bank. I want you to impersonate my client and claim that you are him and then I will give you the money.5. Dear Winner, We are pleased to announce you as one of the 6 lucky winners in the Heritage Lottery Funds draw held on 3rd of October. All 6 winning addresses were randomly selected from a batch of 40,000 international emails. Your email address emerged alongside 5 others as a 3rd category winner in this month's draw. Consequently, you have therefore been approved for a total pay out of £1,600,000 Pounds (one million Six hundred thousand pounds).6. I am the manager of bill and exchange at the foreign remittance department of Banque Internationale du Abidjan. In an account that belongs to one of our foreign customer who died along with his entire family in November 1997 in a plane crash we discovered an abandoned sum of U.S$8.5m US dollars (Eight million, five hundred thousand US dollars). I will be transferring the full amount to your account and it will be there till I get out of my country. In exchange you will get 30 percent of the amount as commission.Not only are there many cases of people who have had their bank accounts drained by 419, there are also cases where they have been lured into actually travelling to Nigeria and entering the country without a passport - which puts them at the mercy of the scamsters. Some law enforcement agencies report that some of these people have not left that country alive.After 419, comes the online job scam. There are many online classified services full of job offers for what are listed as re-shipping firms. Requirements of the job are simple - accepting goods or money and transferring them out of State. Employees get to keep 10 to 15 per cent of everything they ship. But, of course, even this is a scam. Thousands of people have fallen victim to re-shipping scams.However, a large number of victims are enticed into believing they have been singled out from the masses to share in multi-million dollar windfall profits for doing absolutely nothing. But the question is how do they get your name? Well they may have got your name from a variety of sources like trade journals, professional directories, newspapers and commercial libraries. They do not target a single company, but send out mails to an individual.A person posing as Vincent approached the complainant through e-mail with a business proposal for investment in real estate in India. Vincent and the complainant decided to meet. During the meeting, one more Nigerian posing as Andre came along. Both said they were in possession of a large number of defaced Indian currency notes of Rs 1,000 denomination. They claimed that these defaced notes could be recovered by applying certain chemicals and by using genuine currency notes.They convinced the complainant by giving a live demonstration of the process of recovering the defaced currency notes and gave one such note to him for verification. After the demonstration, the duo told the complainant that in case he was interested in making money, he should bring Rs 50,000 worth of Rs 1,000 denomination. Thereafter, they said, he would be given Rs 1 lakh worth of defaced currency along with the chemicals so that he can recover the currency notes, whenever he wished.Suspecting the intention of the accused, the complainant approached the CBI and a trap was laid. To the decoy, too, the accused gave a currency reconstruction demo. What actually used to happen was that the culprits used to apply a white chemical powder on one genuine currency note and after keeping it between two defaced notes; they used to apply another chemical on it.The three currency notes were then kept in the freezer for 15-20 minutes. These notes were then treated with another chemical and washed in hot water. In this manner, the accused used to produce three different currency notes of Rs 1000 denomination. After the demo, they used to take the genuine money brought by the target as their share and cost of the chemicals and hand over ordinary black paper strips and chemicals to the victim. Subsequent attempts by the victim to recover genuine currency, of course, came to a naught.So, the question is how you safeguard yourself from such tempting offers. The first thing is never wire the money. In order to find out the genuineness of the company use Google search. There are dozens of sites which list companies operating under 419 Scams. However, remember just because the name of the company is not listed in the 419 scam list it does not mean that the e-mail is genuine. Try and get the telephone number. Most scamsters will be reluctant to talk over the phone and prefer to communicate through e-mail. So if you get a mail that talks about you winning a large sum of money, especially in a draw in which you never took part remember what your grandmother told you: You've got to earn your millions.
