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History and Ways to Avoid The Nigerian 419 Scam

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Posted 5th December 2009 at 10:21 AM by rayray7

To all those that have been victims of the dreaded nigerian 419 scam, I understand your predicament and I will shed some light on how not to fall for that scam again. There are many variations of the scam, but a common trait is the victim getting an email.

A brief history of the scam is in order:

Nigeria, a country located in west africa is blessed with natural resources, but cursed with the most corrupt leaders one can imagine. The whole country runs on corruption. Everything can be bought, yes, everything. You need to pay bribe to get what you want. If you have money you can get away with anything, including murder. It is under this mind set that the 419 scam originated. The attitude of the Nigerian authorities is non existent at best. In fact some victims have been doubled scammed by government officials.

The Perpetrators of 419 Scam:

Nigeria is dotted by internet cafes, because home internet connection is mostly not available or not very reliable. The internet cafes charges by the hour and it is very expensive to the average nigerians. The perperators of this crime are reffered to locally as "Yahoo boys" and the victims of the crime are reffered to as "Mogu" which means dummy or fool.

New emails are acquired by using data minning software. The crime is mostly broken into parts. Some of the criminals generate the emails and then sell it to other willing partners. Some on the other hand, specialize in crafting 419 offers that pull like crazy. Again this letters are sold to other willing partners. Now the problems most have is delivering the emails to your inbox. Some have mastered the art of sending emails, using hundreds of google accounts or thousands of yahoo accounts. Some have mastered the art of responding to any replies.

To the 419 criminals, it is a numbers game. They know we humans are greedy and always looking for something for nothing. The response ratio is usually like 1 or 2 percent. And out of the replies maybe another 5 to 10 percent will bite the offer.

Solutions:

Deleting the emails is your best defense. Do not try to respond by cursing them out, because that will only create an avalanche of 419 offers into your inbox. Just delete them and move on. Your email will soon be removed from the list if you just ignore the bait.

My new "Nigerian forum" http://Nairanaira.com will have a section dealing with 419 crimes and many known variations to watch out for. The forum will also encourage discussions on many problems of nigeria and suggestions for progress.
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