Be aware of Scams
Thursday December 13, 2007
With the advent of the Internet there has been more and more Australian's who have come face to face with scams from people trying to steal funds from their bank accounts. Probably the most famous of the Internet scams are the 'Nigerian scams' known as Advance Fee Fraud or 419 scams.
The name 419 comes from the provision of Section 419 of the Nigerian Criminal Code. It relates to receiving benefit by false pretence.
The Nigerian scams work with an email or letter arriving to you with someone claiming to be a government official soliciting your help for the transfer of a ridiculous amount of money in the region of USD$40 or $60 million.
To get the money out of Nigeria's central bank and into your bank account before the government realizes the money is there and charges some tax on it, the scammers will pay you a 10% commission for helping them out. That's a cool USD$4 million for your troubles.
You will be asked to deposit an amount, It could be no less than USD$100,000 for the scammers to trust you.
Obviously once you send your USD$100,000 you're not going to have that USD$40 million arrive into your internet bank account but they may try and hit you again for some more money seeing as you were so helpful with their first request.
At one point, these Nigerian scams were poorly written but they have certainly improved their English skills over the years to make these letters at least sound authentic, even though they are not.
These scammers don't just claim to be from Nigeria. You may receive a 'Nigerian Scam' from anywhere. The letter or email you get may pretend to come from other countries such as Sierra Leone, the Congo, the Ivory Coast, South Africa, Mauritius, Philippines or Azerbaijan.
You can even get one from Australia.
A very simple rule of thumb to use when reading one of these letters or emails is 'If it sounds too good to be true then it probably isn't.'
If you are in receipt of a scam email then contact Scamwatch.
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