Dear Friend,

I hope this message finds you and your loved ones very well indeed. You must be surprised to hear from someone you don't know, so I will explain why I am urgently contacting you. I am Barrister Denis Obozuwa, you were recommended to me by several reputable organizations, who wish to maintain their confidentiality, as a person of great character and trustworthiness. I need your assistance in retrieving a cache of $500,000,000 US. My poor dear wife died in a tragic skateboard accident in November, leaving her fortune in a well in our back yard. Since I just had my back broken while trying to prevent terrorist thugs from burning down our local church, I cannot get down into the well to get at the money, so I am hungry, very hungry, and the money I have made as a barrister has been stolen by evil trolls. If you will help me by sending $100,000 to buy a machine to fetch the money from the well, I will repay you in the amount of $40,000,000 US. All I really want to do at this point in my life—I made this pledge to my own children just after they were swept away by the tsunami—is to help the poor starving children of my country. Please respond soon.

Yours humbly in Jesus,

Barrister Denis Obozuwa

With slight exaggerations, and I do mean slight, this is the sort of message received frequently by people around the world by e-mail, post, or fax. Though they originated in Nigeria, such scams can be worked from anywhere. "The most familiar Nigerian scam," according to Bob Sullivan, technology correspondent for MSNBC, "is an e-mail offering lots of free money in exchange for helping someone with a name like Barrister Richard Okoya. The offer varies, but the theme is the same—help a downtrodden victim recover a large sum of money trapped in an overseas bank, and you will be rewarded handsomely."

The Nigerian scam, according to the 419 Coalition, "is also referred to as 'Advance Fee Fraud,' '419 Fraud' (four-one-nine) after the relevant section of the Criminal Code of Nigeria, 'The Fax Scam' and 'The Nigeria Connection' (mostly in Europe). However, it is usually called plain old '419' even by the Nigerians themselves." An advisory by the Coalition in December 2008 warns again of the phony communications. "The e-mail pitch is familiar to most people by now: a long-lost relative or desperate government official in a war-torn country needs to shuffle some funds around, say $10 million or $20 million, and if you could just help them out for a bit, you get to keep 10 (or 20 or 30) percent for your trouble. All you need to do is send X-amount of dollars to pay some fees and all that cash will suddenly land in your checking account, putting you on Easy Street. By the way, please send the funds through an untraceable wire service. "

"For most," says Sullivan, "the e-mails are the butt of jokes and evoke a 'Who would ever fall for that?' reaction." The scammers themselves refer to their dupes as mugus, magas, or any of a number of other appellations, all of which mean "fools." And there are more mugus than one might think. Though the scams have certain features in common—getting up-front money from a victim, an unforseen development that requires more money—more and more variations have arisen. "Many even avoid the trademark details," says Sullivan: "the barrister, the overseas bank, or even the typical up-front wire payment." Sullivan quotes Dale Miskall, who heads an FBI cybercrime squad in Birmingham, Alabama: "They keep finding new victims. And Americans are very gullible."

Scammers are offering jobs online for "firms" that will be willing to accept goods or money and transfer it out of state. In return, the shippers get to keep a large percentage of what they ship. The U.S. Postal Inspection Service says that thousands have fallen for this scam .Other scammers take the romance approach , prowling chat rooms and finding lonely women, winning their trust and even affection, and eventually finagling them out of money.

In spite of efforts to curb the Nigerian scammers, the scams have refused to go away. After a statement this month by Mrs. Farida Waziri, head of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission in Nigeria, that "advance fee fraud cases are speedily tried and judgments rendered," the 419 Coalition called this notion "laughable. In fact, given the magnitude of 419 operations operating out of Nigeria, there are few arrests, fewer convictions swift or otherwise, and even fewer reparations of 419ed funds."

If you are contacted by scammers and choose, for whatever reason, to do business with them, the Coalition offers the following advice:

1. Never pay anything up front.

2. Never extend credit.

3. Never do anything until their check clears.

4. Never expect help from the Nigerian government.

5. Never rely on your own government to bail you out.

To avoid being a mugu, your best bet is simply to ignore the communication or report it to the Treasury Department. Or you might consider investing in some of my elegant beachfront condos in Slovakia....

BreadStreet Author: James F.  Cotter

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Article also published at Associated Content