Do I have To Lie To Succeed As A Marketer?

Roger,

Thanks. Nice to know there's someone who can restate a position while keeping to the intent and spirit of the original. Seems a rare capability these days.

CDarklock,

I don't think you're "getting" my point, but that may be a result of how I'm making it. Thank you for understanding, despite that breakdown of communication, that it's statistical, not some sort of prejudice.

Let's try to make this a bit clearer.

Suppose, for the purposes of example, that any large group of people has the same percentage of criminal types in it. (That's not true, but it makes a good starting point.)

Let's go with 1%, again for example purposes.

Let's further assume (again, not true, but useful for example) that the spread of criminal activity is similar in various cultures and locales. X% to violent crime, Y% corporate crime, Z% some other type, etc.

We're talking about online crime, a specific type. Assume the same percentage in each of a number of countries, but that the criminals in one country are many times more active in that area than those in others. Let's further assume that they use methods to significantly scale up their activities.

Happens all the time. The majority of spam on the net is originated by people living in the US, for example. A tiny percentage of the population, with a devastatingly out-of-proportion impact on the rest of the world.

Because of the indirect nature of most spams - go here and order - and the fact that the invitation must be acted on, it's a smaller harm per unit. MUCH smaller. Except in cases of identity theft, the act of ordering is no more harmful on an individual basis than buying something at a store and finding out it's junk. We're not talking large amounts of money per order.

In Nigeria, the scams are smaller in absolute number, because of the smaller number of people online. The approaches taken, however, are more direct, and usually involve larger sums of money. Thus, they tend to have more of an immediate and noticeable impact.

For the sake of this discussion, let's throw the 419 scams into the category of spam, and ignore it. It works, and scams people out of big chunks of money, but it requires the active involvement of the scammed. (See Advance-fee fraud - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia for more on this type of fraud.)

Nigerian fraud frequently reverses the approach. They will order expensive products, or large batches of inexpensive products, using fake bank checks and stolen credit cards. They've even developed cons that end up with sellers sending the merchandise AND cash to the fraudster.

I've spoken with many owners of small businesses and the managers of a few larger ones, and been told consistently that all, or virtually all, of the orders they've received from Nigeria were fraudulent. If you start asking around, you'll find this out for yourself. It's why so many payment processors won't take orders or allow accounts from within Nigeria.

This is where the stats come in. Only a small percentage of people within the country have Internet access. Most of those people haven't the ability to order internationally, even if they were disposed to do so. The crooks, on the other hand, have ready access and systems in place. One recent sting caught a Nigerian operation with a huge amount in fake bank checks, for example. I forget if it was hundreds of millions or over a billion dollars worth. For one group. There are many of these organizations.

That's aside from stolen credit card numbers, mind you.

Remember, we have very little business originating online from the vast majority of honest citizens of the country.

Now we get back to the 1% assumption. Let's consider what happens when that 1% uses means to expand the number of these fraudulent orders, so that they're placing fraudulent orders at a rate that's some significant multiple of the average.

We see a constant stream of activity from the crooks, and a heavier focus on online crime. The percentages are thus wildly skewed in favor of fraud.

That's the situation with regard to orders originating in Nigeria.

There are other factors, but that gives the broad outline.

For fun, do a Google search on "fraudulent orders originating in Nigeria" (leave off the quotes). Look especially for the shipping clerk scam. Also search on the phrase "Nigerian money mules" - again, without the quotes.

I have no reason to want to dismiss doing business with a country of more than 140 million people, other than that the business I would encounter from that country is VERY high risk.


Paul