The world of online scams is complex and ever-evolving, with fraudsters constantly adapting their methods to deceive unsuspecting victims. Among the most notorious are Nigerian scammers, often referred to as "Yahoo Yahoo" in their home country. To understand their operations, it's helpful to delve into the slang they use and the types of scams they perpetrate.
Slang Terms and Their Usage
The Urban Thesaurus was created by indexing millions of different slang terms which are defined on sites like Urban Dictionary. These indexes are then used to find usage correlations between slang terms. The official Urban Dictionary API is used to show the hover-definitions. Due to the way the algorithm works, the thesaurus gives you mostly related slang words, rather than exact synonyms. The higher the terms are in the list, the more likely that they're relevant to the word or phrase that you searched for.
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The Faces Behind the Scams
In Nigeria, many scammers come from poorer and more-educated backgrounds, where Internet access and better education, along with inability to afford basic necessities, drive people into committing online fraud.
One reporter had the opportunity to interview two fraudsters, Sheye and Danjuma, who shared insights into their craft. They revealed that they make most of their money duping fellow Nigerians, using elaborate scams like Elawala (or "Let's go") that involve taxi cabs, "juju men," magic charms, and bags of cash. They also mentioned a scam involving a French man, a locked box filled with gold, and expensive pliers.
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These scammers are often willing to go to great lengths to maintain their credibility, even entertaining potential "clients" in fancy hotels and flying them to other countries like Ghana to meet with fake business partners.
The duo says they are able to skirt law enforcement because they have a lot of people on their payroll. “They’re all criminals,” Danjuma explains. They estimate that 30 percent of their earnings go to what they call “security”-that is, the payment of bribes.
They justify what they do by claiming that the highest levels of the Nigerian government are ridden with scammers. The fancy neighborhood where we meet backs up against a slum village. The shack homes are constructed of used plastic cement bags tied to sticks. Feral dogs scamper around.
“The money [the government] should have used to construct this road, they are using for personal use,” Sheye says.
Advance Fee Fraud: A Detailed Look
An advance-fee scam is a form of fraud where the victim pays money to someone in anticipation of receiving something of greater value, such as a loan, contract, investment, or gift, and then receives little or nothing in return. This type of scam has many variations, including the infamous Nigerian prince scam, also known as a 419 scam.
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In 2011, the FBI received close to 30,000 reports of advance fee ploys, called “419 scams” after the section of the Nigerian criminal code that outlaws fraud. The agency received over 4,000 complaints of advance fee romance scams in 2012, with victim losses totaling over $55 million. Nigerians aren’t the only ones committing international advance fee fraud, but nearly one-fifth of all such scams originate in the West African country.
The modern scam is similar to the Spanish Prisoner scam that dates back to the late 18th century. One variant of the scam may date back to the 18th or 19th century, as a very similar letter, entitled "The Letter from Jerusalem". The modern-day transnational scam can be traced back to Germany in 1922 and became popular during the 1980s.
There are many variants of the template letter. Other official-looking letters were sent from a writer who said he was a director of the state-owned Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation. He said he wanted to transfer $20 million to the recipient's bank account-money that was budgeted but was never spent. In exchange for transferring the funds out of Nigeria, the recipient would keep 30% of the total.
The money could be in the form of gold bullion, gold dust, money in a bank account, blood diamonds, a series of cheques or bank drafts, and so on. The sums involved are usually in the millions of dollars, and the investor is promised a large share, typically ten to fifty percent, in return for assisting the fraudster to retrieve or expatriate the money.
Once the victim's confidence has been gained, the scammer then introduces a delay or monetary hurdle that prevents the deal from occurring as planned, such as "To transmit the money, we need to bribe a bank official. Sometimes psychological pressure is added by claiming that the scammers' side, to pay certain fees, had to sell belongings and mortgage a house or by comparing the salary scale and living conditions in their country to those in the West.
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Much of the time, however, the needed psychological pressure is self-applied: once the victims have provided money toward the payoff, they feel they have a vested interest in seeing the "deal" through. The essential fact in all advance-fee fraud operations is that the promised money transfer to the victim never happens because the money does not exist.
Common Tactics and Methods
- Bank Account Information: During the course of many schemes, scammers ask victims to supply bank account information. Usually this is a "test" devised by the scammer to gauge the victim's gullibility.
- Wire Transfers: Scammers instead usually request that payments be made using a wire transfer service like Western Union and MoneyGram. The reason given by the scammer usually relates to the speed at which the payment can be received and processed, allowing quick release of the supposed payoff. The real reason for using such money-sending services is that such wire transfers are irreversible and often untraceable.
- Burner Phones: Telephone numbers used by scammers tend to come from burner phones. In Ivory Coast, a scammer may purchase an inexpensive mobile phone and a pre-paid SIM card without submitting any identifying information. Nigeria also contains many businesses that provide false documents used in scams.
- Facsimile Machines: Facsimile machines are commonly used tools of business whenever a client requires a hard copy of a document. They can also be simulated using web services and made untraceable by the use of prepaid phones connected to mobile fax machines or by use of a public fax machine such as one owned by a document processing business like FedEx Office/Kinko's. Thus, scammers posing as business entities often use fax transmissions as an anonymous form of communication.
- SMS Bulk Senders: Abusing SMS bulk senders such as WASPs, scammers subscribe to these services using fraudulent registration details and paying either via cash or with stolen credit card details. They then send out masses of unsolicited SMS messages to victims stating they have won a competition, lottery, reward, or an event and that they have to contact somebody to claim their prize.
- Telephone Calls: Many scams use telephone calls to convince the victim that the person on the other end of the deal is a real, truthful person. The scammer, possibly impersonating a person of a nationality or gender other than their own, would arouse suspicion by telephoning the victim.
- Relay Services: In these cases, scammers use TRS, a US federally funded relay service where an operator or a text/speech translation program acts as an intermediary between someone using an ordinary telephone and a deaf caller using TDD or other teleprinter device. The scammer may claim they are deaf, and that they must use a relay service.
- International Travel: Sometimes, victims are invited to a country to meet government officials, an associate of the scammer, or the scammer themselves. Some victims who travel are instead held for ransom. Sometimes victims are ransomed, kidnapped, or murdered.
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Types of Advance Fee Fraud
There are many variations on the most common stories, and also many variations on the way the scam works. Some of the more commonly seen variants involve employment scams, lottery scams, online sales and rentals, and romance scams.
This article cannot list every known and future type of advanced fee fraud or 419 scheme; only some major types are described.
| Scam Type | Description |
|---|---|
| Employment Scams | Scammers target people who have posted their résumés on job sites, offering exceptional salary and benefits but requiring a "work permit" or other fees. |
| Lottery Scams | Victims receive fake notices of lottery wins and are asked to send sensitive information and pay fees to release the funds. |
| Online Sales and Rentals | Scammers use classified advertisements to purchase goods or rent properties, sending fake checks for amounts greater than the asking price and requesting the difference. |
| Pet Scams | Scammers advertise pets for sale or adoption online, requesting fees for shipping, insurance, and other fictitious expenses. |
| Romance Scams | Con artists approach victims on online dating services, building relationships and then requesting money for various emergencies or expenses. |
Employment Scams
This scam targets people who have posted their résumés on job sites. The scammer sends a letter with a falsified company logo. The job offer usually indicates exceptional salary and benefits, and requests that the victim needs a "work permit" for working in the country, and includes the address of a (fake) "government official" to contact. The "government official" then proceeds to fleece the victim by extracting fees from the unsuspecting user for the work permit and other fees.
Many legitimate (or at least fully registered) companies work on a similar basis, using this method as their primary source of earnings. Some modelling and escort agencies tell applicants that they have a number of clients lined up, but that they require some sort of prior "registration fee", usually paid in by an untraceable method, e.g.
The scammer contacts the victim to interest them in a "work-from-home" opportunity, or asks them to cash a cheque or money order that for some reason cannot be redeemed locally. In one cover story, the perpetrator of the scam wishes the victim to work as a "mystery shopper", evaluating the service provided by MoneyGram or Western Union locations within major retailers such as Wal-Mart.
The scammer sends the victim a forged or stolen cheque or money order as described above, the victim deposits it-banks will often credit an account with the value of a cheque not obviously false- and sends the money to the scammer via wire transfer. Later the cheque is not honoured ("bounces") and the bank debits the victim's account.
More sophisticated scams advertise jobs with real companies and offer lucrative salaries and conditions with the fraudsters pretending to be recruitment agents. A bogus telephone or online interview may take place and after some time the applicant is informed that the job is theirs. To secure the job they are instructed to send money for their work visa or travel costs to the agent, or to a bogus travel agent who works on the scammer's behalf. No matter what the variation, they always involve the job seeker sending them or their agent money, credit card or bank account details.
A newer form of employment scam has arisen in which users are sent a bogus job offer but are not asked to give financial information. Another form of employment scam involves making people attend a fake "interview" where they are told the benefits of the company. The attendees are then made to assist to a conference where a scammer will use elaborate manipulation techniques to convince the attendees to purchase products, in a similar manner to the catalog merchant business model, as a hiring requisite.
Quite often, the company lacks any form of the physical catalog to help them sell products (e.g. jewelry). When "given" the job, the individual is then asked to promote the scam job offer on their own.
Lottery Scams
The lottery scam involves fake notices of lottery wins, although the intended victim has not entered the lottery. The "winner" is usually asked to send sensitive information such as name, residential address, occupation/position, lottery number etc. In addition to harvesting this information, the scammer then notifies the victim that releasing the funds requires some small fee (insurance, registration, or shipping).
The fake cheque technique described above is also used. Fake or stolen cheque, representing a part payment of the winnings, being sent; then a fee, smaller than the amount received, is requested. Typical lottery scams address the person as some variation of Lucky Winner.
Online Sales and Rentals
Many scams involve the purchase of goods and services via classified advertisements, especially on sites like Craigslist, eBay, or Gumtree. They will typically then send a fake cheque written for an amount greater than the asking price, asking the seller to send the difference to an alternate address, usually by money order or Western Union.
They offer to pay the airfare of the participants, but not the hotel accommodations. Sometimes, an inexpensive rental property is advertised by a fake landlord, who is typically out of state (or the country) and asking for the rent and/or deposit to be wired to them.
Or the con artist finds a property, pretends to be the owner, lists it online, and communicates with the would-be renter to make a cash deposit. The scammer may also be the renter as well, in which case they pretend to be a foreign student and contact a landlord seeking accommodation. They usually state they are not yet in the country and wish to secure accommodations prior to arriving.
Pet Scams
The pet may either be advertised as being for-sale or up for adoption. Typically, the pet is advertised on online advertising pages complete with photographs taken from various sources such as real advertisements, blogs or wherever else an image can be stolen. By determining the location of the victim, the scammer ensures he is far enough from the victim so as to not allow the buyer to physically view the pet.
Should the scammer be questioned, as the advertisement claimed a location initially, the scammer will claim work circumstances having forced him to relocate. Upon the victim deciding to adopt or purchase the pet, a courier has to be used which is in reality part of the scam. If this is for an adopted pet, typically the victim is expected to pay some fee such as insurance, food or shipping.
Numerous problems are encountered in the courier phase of the scam. The crate may be said to be too small, and the victim has the option of either purchasing a crate with air conditioning or renting one while also paying a deposit, typically called a caution or cautionary fee. The victim may also have to pay for insurance if such fees have not been paid yet. Additionally, the victim may be asked to pay for a health certificate needed to transport the pet, and for kennel fees during the recuperation period.
The further the scam progresses, the more similar the fictitious fees are to those of typical 419 scams.
Romance Scams
One of the variants is the Romance Scam, a money-for-romance angle. The con artist approaches the victim on an online dating service, an instant messenger, or a social networking site.
An extreme example of this is the case of a 67-year-old Australian woman, Jette Jacobs. In 2013, she traveled to South Africa to supposedly marry her scammer, Jesse Orowo Omokoh, 28, after having sent more than $90,000 to him over a three-year period.
