Nigerian Scams, Internet Safety, Fraud, and Human Nature: The Lemming Gets Wordy

"Woman out $400K to 'Nigerian scam' con artists"
KATU (November 11, 2008)

"SWEET HOME, Ore. – Janella Spears doesn't think she's a sucker or an easy mark.

"Besides her work as a registered nurse, Spears – no relation to the well-known pop star – also teaches CPR and is a reverend who has married many couples. She also communicates with lightning-fast sign language with her hearing-impaired husband.

"So how did this otherwise lucid, intelligent woman end up sending nearly half a million dollars to a bunch of con artists running what has to be one of the best-known Internet scams in the world?..."

It's a fairly detailed account of how and why "this otherwise lucid, intelligent woman" sent almost a half-million dollars into oblivion in about two years.

My hat's off to Janella Spears, who "has gone public with her story as a warning to others not to fall victim." I think quite a few people in her position would just as soon not spread the story around.

How to Lose $400,000 in Just Two Years

Here's how it goes:

1. Respond to an email that promises big bucks for a little money up front
2. When they ask for more money, give it to them
3. If you have more money, go to step 2
4. If you do not have more money, borrow some and go to step 2

What got Janella Spears hooked was the scammers using her grandfather's name. What kept her hooked, apparently, was the idea that each step was the last step. Besides, she got letters from

• The president of Nigeria
• President Bush
• FBI Director Robert Muller
  • (I know: it's Robert S. Mueller, III, but that's how the scammers spelled it)

She got documents from the

• Bank of Nigeria
• United Nations

President Bush and the FBI Director needed her help. The letter from Bush said that terrorists could get the money if she didn't help.

No, President George W. Bush isn't in on the scam: the letters were fakes. So were the documents.

Meanwhile, the amount of money she thought she'd get was going up.

I'd Never Fall for This, Right?

Actually, I can't imagine a situation where I'd believe a line like this, but I know it's a theoretical possibility.

My email service has pretty good filters, but I still get scam emails from time to time. The ones that just might be legitimate messages get opened, the rest don't. (I've also got pretty good internal security on my system, don't open attachments, and have rather cautious settings on the email reader.)

I actually enjoy those wonderfully polite messages, telling me that the grand high poobah of Lower Slobovia, or whoever, needs my help to move money around; or that my Uncle Louie in Australia has died, and left me money that runs into seven or eight figures.

But believe it? No.

Using a real relation's name was something special, of course, in this lady's case.

And, over the years, some scams have come close to hooking me.

There was the one from a very good imitation of my credit card company: I wound up having a nice chat with someone in that company's security division, which confirmed some assumptions I'd made about the company having an ounce of sense.

I've gotten emails, written in bad imitations of lawyerese, telling me that I'll inherit a fortune if I respond. As I recall, one actually did refer to a dead relative in Australia. I like to think that, even if the scammers used the name of a real person, I wouldn't respond. Not to them, anyway.

Appeals to Authority - Misspelled and Otherwise

I would be very dubious, if the president of the United States wrote a personal letter, saying that my help was needed.

It wouldn't matter if it was George W. Bush, or Barack Obama. The odds that someone would say, "help me, Obi-Wan Kenobi, you're our only hope" are slim. At best. I'd be particularly dubious, starting next year, if the president spelled his name "Barak Obama."

Does that make me really smart? Or immune? No. Just wary and better-trained in evaluating data than most people.

At that, some of those messages have really tugged at my heartstrings. And purse strings.

The Nigerian Scam and Other Ways to Lose Big in the Privacy of Your Own Home

Online scams are old hat. Some news services aren't even covering this Oregon incident. Nosing around for this post, I found a few useful and/or interesting resources:

• CNN
  • "Seven online-security blunders to avoid"
    (August 20, 2008)
  • "Too good to be true? "
    (with CareerBuilder.com) (October 2, 2006)
  • "No fooling: the 10 worst Internet hoaxes"
    (December 24, 2001)
• "Nigerian Scam"
  ScamBusters.org
• "The 'Nigerian" Scam' Costly Compassion "
  Federal Trade Commission
• "Nigerian Scam"
  Snopes.com