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The syntax is tortured, the grammar mutilated, but the message - sent by snail mail, telex, fax, or e-mail - is coherent: an African kingpin or his inheritors wish to transfer finances amassed in old age of transplant and venality to a safe bank account in the West. They seek the recipient's permission to do usage of his or her inconspicuous services for a percentage of the booty - usually many billions of dollars. A fee is required to hasten the proceedings, or to pay taxes, or to corrupt functionaries - they plausibly explain.

It is a cozenage two decennaries old - and it still works. Only last month, a bookkeeper for a Berkley, Wolverine State law firm embezzled $2.1 million and wired it to assorted bank accounts in South Africa and Taiwan. Other victims were kidnapped for ransom money as they traveled abroad to accumulate their "share". Some never made it back. Every year, there are 5 such as homicides as well as 8-10 snatchings of American citizens alone. The usual ransom money demanded is half a million to a million dollars.

The cozenage is so widespread that the Nigerians saw tantrum to explicitly ban it in article 419 of their penal code. The Nigerian President, Olusegun Obasanjo castigated the fraudsters for inflicting "incalculable damage to Nigerian businesses" and for "placing the full country under suspicion".

"Wired" quotes statistics presented at the International Conference on Advance Fee (419) Frauds in New House Of York on Sept. 17:

"Roughly 1 percent of the billions of people who have 419 e-mails and facsimiles are successfully scammed. Annual losings to the cozenage in the United States sum more than $100 million, and law enforcement functionaries believe planetary losings may number over $1.5 billion."

According to the "IFCC 2001 Internet Fraud Report", published by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the National White Person Collar Crime Center, Nigerian missive fraud cases amount to 15.5 percent of all grievances. The Internet Fraud Ailment Center mentions such as rip-offs to the United States Secret Service. While the median value loss in all mode of Internet fraud was $435 - in the Nigerian cozenage it was a staggering $5575. But only one in 10 successful law-breakings is reported, states the FBI's report.

The IFCC supplies this advisory to possible targets:

Be disbelieving of people representing themselves as Nigerian or other foreign government functionaries asking for your aid in placing large sums of money of money of money in overseas bank accounts.

Do not believe the promise of large sums of money for your cooperation.

Do not give out any personal information regarding your savings, checking, credit, or other financial accounts.

If you are solicited, make not react and quickly advise the appropriate authorities.

The "419 Coalition" is more than succinct and a batch more pessimistic:

"NEVER wage anything up presence for ANY reason.

NEVER widen credit for ANY reason.

NEVER make anything until their check clears.

NEVER anticipate ANY aid from the Nigerian Government.

NEVER trust on YOUR Government to bail you out."

The State Department's Agency of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Personal Business published a booklet titled "Nigerian Advance Fee Fraud". It depicts the history of this peculiar type of swindle:

"AFF criminals include university-educated professionals who are the best in the human race for nonviolent dramatic crimes. AFF letters first surfaced in the mid-1980s around the clip of the collapse of human race oil prices, which is Nigeria's chief foreign exchange earner. Some Nigerians turned to law-breaking in order to survive. Fraudulent strategies such as as AFF succeeded in Nigeria, because Nigerian criminals took advantage of the fact that Nigerians talk English, the international language of business, and the country's huge oil wealthiness and natural gas militia - ranked 13th in the human race - offer moneymaking business chances that attract many foreign companies and individuals."

According to London's Metropolitan Police Company Fraud Department, possible targets in the United Kingdom and the USA alone have c. 1500 solicitations a week. The United States Secret Service Financial Crime Division takes in 100 phone calls a twenty-four hours from Americans attack by the con-men. It now acknowledges that "Nigerian organized law-breaking rings running fraud strategies through the mail and phone lines are now so large, they stand for a serious financial menace to the country".

Sometimes even the postages affixed to such as letters are forged. Nigerian postal workers are known to be in cahoots with the fraudsters. Name Calling and computer addresses are obtained from "trade journals, business directories, magazine and newspaper advertisements, Chambers of commerce, and the Internet".

Victims are either too intimidated to kick or else loath to acknowledge their collusion in money laundering and fraud. Others seek in conceited to reimburse their losings by ploughing more than money into the scheme.

Contrary to popular image, the swindlers are often violent and involved in other criminal pursuits, such as as drug trafficking, According to Nigeria's Drug Law Enforcement Agency. The blight have distribute to other countries. Letters from Sierra Leone, Ghana, Congo, Liberia, Togo, Ivory Coast, Benin, Burkina Faso, South Africa, Taiwan, or even Canada, the United Kingdom, Oman, and Socialist Republic Of Vietnam are not uncommon.

The dodges autumn into a few categories.

Over-invoiced contract cozenages affect the apparent transfer of amounts obtained through exaggerated bills to the bank account of an unrelated foreign firm. Contract fraud or "trade default" is simply a fake order accompanied by a fraudulent bank bill of exchange for the merchandises of an exportation company accompanied by demand for "samples" and assorted transaction "fees and charges".

Some of the rackets are apparent outlandish. In the "wash-wash" confidence fast one people have got been known to pay up to $200,000 for a particular solution to take discolorations from billions in defaced dollar notes. Others "bought" heavily "discounted" petroleum oil stored in "secret" locations - or existent estate in rezoned locales. "Clearing houses" or "venture capital organizations" claiming to move on behalf of the Central Bank of Nigeria wash the return of the scams.

In another twist, charities, academic institutions, non-profit-making organizations, and spiritual groupings are asked to pay the heritages tax on a "donation". Some "dignitaries" and their relations may seek to fly the country and inquire the victims to advance the payoff money in tax return for a generous cut of the wealthiness they have got stashed abroad.

"Bankers" may happen inactive accounts with billions of dollars - often in lottery profits - waiting to be transferred to a safe off-shore haven. Bogus occupations with exaggerated wages are another apparent manner to defraud state-owned companies - as is the sale of the target's used vehicle to them for an extravagant price. There looks to be no end to criminal ingenuity.

Lately, the correspondence purports to be coming from - often achromatic - disinterested professional 3rd parties. Accountants, lawyers, directors, trustees, security personnel, or bankers make-believe to be acting as fiduciaries for the existent very important person in need of help. Less fleeceable victims are subjected to apparent old extortion with verbal bullying and stalking.

The more than heightened populace consciousness turns with over-exposure and the tighter the nett of international cooperation against the scam, the Wilder the narratives it spawns. Letters have got got surfaced recently signed by dying refugees, subsisters of the September 11 attacks, and serendipitous United States rangers on missionary post in Afghanistan.

Governments throughout the human race have geared up to protect their businessmen. The United States Department of Commerce, for instance, prints the "World Traders information Report", compiled by United States embassy in Nigeria. It "provides the following types of information: types of organizations, twelvemonth established, principal owners, size, merchandise line, and financial and trade references".

Unilateral United States activity, inefficacious coaction with the Nigerian authorities some of whose functionaries are rumored to be in on the deals, many-sided attempts in the model of the OECD and the Interpol, instruction and information political campaigns - nil looks to be working.

The treatment of 419 fraudsters in Nigeria is so indulgent that, according to the "Nigeria Tribune", the United States threatened the country with countenances if it makes not considerably better its record on financial law-breaking by November 2002. Both the United States Treasury's Financial Crime Enforcement Network (FINCEN) and the OECD's Financial Action Undertaking Military Unit (FATF) had characterized the country as "one of the worst culprits of financial law-breakings in the world". The Nigerian cardinal bank promises to get to clasps with this debilitating problem.

Nigerian themselves - though often victims of the cozenages - take the phenomenon in stride. The Nigerian "Daily Champion", proffered this insightful apology on behalf of the pitiless and merciless 419 gangs. It is deserving quoting at length:

"To eliminate the 419 scourge, leaders at all degrees should work assiduously to make employment chances and people perceptual experience of the leaders as function models. The country's very high unemployment figure have made nonsensicality of the so-called democracy dividends. Great bulk of Nigerian vernal school leaver's including University graduates, are without seeable agency of livelihood... The fact stays that most of these teeming people cannot just watch our so-called leaders syphon their God-given wealthy. So, they resorted to option fraudulent agency of support called 419, at least to be seen as have got arrived... Some of these 419ers are in the National Assembly and the State Houses of Assembly while some environ the President and governors across the country."

Some chisellers seek to glorify their criminal activities with a political and historical context. The Web land site of the "419 Coalition" incorporates letters casting the cozenage as a word form of forced reparation for slavery, kindred to the compensation paid by Germany to subsisters of the holocaust. The assurance pranksters tout of defrauding the "white civilization" and unmasking the falseness of its claims for superiority. But a few delusional people aside, this is nil but a smokescreen.

Greed outweighs fear and greed enmeshes people in clearly criminal enterprises. The "victims" of advance fee cozenages are rarely unaware of their alleged role. They knowingly and intentionally collude with self-professed criminals to fleece authorities and institutions. This is one of the rare law-breakings where quarry and culprit may well rate each other.