[LINK] 419 Fraud in The Globe and Mail
Dec. 5th, 2005 05:13 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rfmcdonaldThe front page of today's The Globe and Mail features Stephanie Nolen's article "Nigerian e-mail scammers feeding on greed, gullibility", examining the phenomenon of 419 fraud.
The close association of 419 fraud with Nigeria can be blamed upon the fact that Nigeria is unfortunate enough to combine a well-educated and technologically literate population with a dysfunctional economy. With one or two actual replies for every thousand E-mails sent out, sitting in front of a computer all day and asking for help in relocating vast sums of money can actually be time well spent.
A law now before Parliament will make spam punishable by a jail term of up to three years and fines of up to $10,000. The bill would also target Internet service providers who facilitate the spam scams or fail to co-operate with law enforcement, with further fines of up to $100,000. In response, Internet cafés all over this country now post signs reading "Scammers beware! 419 not allowed here," and similar warnings. The commission wants to target banks, obliging them to report suspicious deposits.
I'm not sure how to take Nolen's discovery that Canadians are hard to get, though.
Is this something that one can be proud of?
In a steamy Lagos Internet café, thumping with the bass beat of Nigerian rock videos on a TV overhead, barrister Olayinka Okwudili sits writing an urgent e-mail about his financial crisis.
If you believe the letter, he's a prominent Lagos barrister who needs to move some money. It is possible, however, that this young man in artfully distressed jeans and a T-shirt is not, in fact, a barrister, but he is distinctly unwilling to discuss the matter.
Similar young men, alone or in pairs, are at many of the computers around him in a middle-class residential neighbourhood of Africa's busiest city, some of whom can be overheard discussing the exact turn of phrase they need for their letters, which seek "dear friends" in "far off lands" to help them with the "very urgent matter of $10-million" tragically left in the account of their "very dear late father."
The close association of 419 fraud with Nigeria can be blamed upon the fact that Nigeria is unfortunate enough to combine a well-educated and technologically literate population with a dysfunctional economy. With one or two actual replies for every thousand E-mails sent out, sitting in front of a computer all day and asking for help in relocating vast sums of money can actually be time well spent.
Chris Ola, who heads the national police fraud squad, marvels at the amount of scamming, but said young people here today often feel they have no choice. "Even if you have a business and you are straight, you can't succeed in this system," he said. "In Nigeria we don't have welfare programs or social security and because of the economic downturn we have a lot of well-equipped Nigerians who are supposed to be employed gainfully but there is nothing for them," he said. Nonetheless, he marvels. "Any cyber café you go to you just see people plotting their way out of Nigeria or plotting some big money to come to them."
A law now before Parliament will make spam punishable by a jail term of up to three years and fines of up to $10,000. The bill would also target Internet service providers who facilitate the spam scams or fail to co-operate with law enforcement, with further fines of up to $100,000. In response, Internet cafés all over this country now post signs reading "Scammers beware! 419 not allowed here," and similar warnings. The commission wants to target banks, obliging them to report suspicious deposits.
I'm not sure how to take Nolen's discovery that Canadians are hard to get, though.
"The Americans always go for it," according to a senior member of one 419 ring, who gave his name as Sunny. "But Canadians never do it. It's difficult to hook a person from Canada."
Is this something that one can be proud of?
