ISPs fail to stop Nigerian scamster spamsters

THE "NIGERIAN SPAM" emails are the bane of an online journalist's existence. We post our email address for reader correspondence but everyday have to sort the genuine communications from the rubbish. Here at The INQUIRER, it is not uncommon to receive ,amu more than 10 of these scam letters each day and our US contacts in various fields tell us that they often receive even more.

So what are these emails?
Almost inevitably they are from someone who claims to have some kind of access to a not-so-small fortune - $ 78 million was in recent emails - and they just need a person like yourself to help them get their hands on it. Of course they will share the profits with you, as much as 25 or 30% is commonly mentioned. All they really need is all the details of some bank account that you hold…

I have never taken them up on their offer but according to other reports one can expect a number of "delays" to the transaction, a number of people who must be bribed along the route to all this money. Unfortunately, the instigators of this scam will not be able to pay these bribes themselves and you will be asked to continually provide this money. They will be terribly sorry about this situation but keep assuring you that the treasure is still there and that each new bribe will be the last. One day, when you have parted with several thousand US dollars, you will just never hear from them again.

But surely these scams are illegal?
Well, it is not quite that easy. To prove a case you would have to be able to prove that no such fortune existed and that the instigators were not genuinely misinformed. In the unlikely eventuality that you did manage to catch up with them they could easily claim that they'd had a computer failure, had lost your email address and had finally done the deal through someone else. "Sorry about that and here's you money back." is about the best result that you could ever dream of.

On top of this, you probably could not expect much help to recover your money. Not only would you need to overcome the attitude that you were greedy and got what you deserved but you would have to convince the relevant authorities that there was some merit in investigating the case. When I received one such letter, I offered to work with my bank's security people to help them trace the people operating this scam but the bank was just not interested and who could really blame them when there is nothing in it for them? [We could, Ed.]

Where do the emails come from?
Of a recent 24 emails that were examined in detail, one was from Zimbabwe, one from Sierre Leone, two from South Africa, two from the Democratic Republic of Congo and the remaining 18 (a full two-thirds) were from Nigeria. We've had emails like this from Benin and other countries too - the emails examined are just a sample of last week's trash.

There seems little doubt that Nigeria is the origin of many of the emails because the knowledge of Nigerian political events appears to be quite good. What's more several emails provide a phone number for contact and these all include the correct "234" international prefix for Nigeria, and the area code "1" which is for the Lagos area.

The "bible" on matters of travel, Lonely Planet, describes Nigeria as being the home of assorted lawlessness, widespread corruption and violence. It talks of carjackings, kidnapping, piracy, riots, and points out that street crime, robberies and muggings occur throughout the country, often in broad daylight. It truly seems like your chances of assistance from Nigerian authorities to trace the various perpetrators of these emails is approximately zero.

In particular, of the 24 emails there were four under different names which all claimed to come from the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) and have either $30 or $31 million dollars as a result of over-invoicing petroleum industry contractors. In all four cases, they specifically mention some pieces of equipment which would normally be found in petroleum refineries, so the writers are clearly well-informed about the business. It's difficult to ignore the possibility that employees of the NNPC may be the source of these emails.

What about the email providers - why don't they stop this?
That's a very good question, especially considering that many of the emails come via US service providers and that the US is supposedly clamping down on various internet scams.

Of the 24 emails received, there were four who held accounts with Lycos and another four held Yahoo! accounts. Four more came through winning.com, usa.com. myself.com and accountant.com, which are all services that were or are offered through Easylink Services Corporation, of Edison, New Jersey in the USA. Another service provider is mail.com and it gives as its owner company Net2phone of Newark, New Jersey but checks of some links into Easylink Services Corporation suddenly came back as being part of mail.com.

A brief check of the Terms and Conditions of these three service providers showed that the sending of unsolicited spam is clearly forbidden, along with a range of other illegal activities. Are subscriber fees more important that the upholding of terms and conditions, we ask ourselves?

The US connections do not finish with these three large organisations because two emails were from accounts at hotvoice.com, a domain owned by Hongliu Li, of Cupertino, California; another was from 37.com operated by 37.com, Inc, of Wilmington, Delaware; and one from excite.com which is registered to Infospace, Inc of Bellevue, WA, USA. One writer even gave us a second email on which he can be contacted. This was at pathfinder.com, a service run by Time Inc., of New York.

This brings the number of "Nigerian scam" emails that were received via service providers located in the USA to about two-thirds of all emails. It would appear that efforts from the SEC and others to combat internet fraud either don't seem to be working or that these authorities just don't care if foreign nationals create these emails using US service providers.

Of the remainder, two came from Hong Kong, through email services operated by uymail.com and hknetmail.com; two came via eircom.net, which is operated by Telecomm Eireann of Green West, of Dublin, Ireland. One came from mailsurf.com which is in City Road, London, but gives a Bavarian address as the technical contact. The last one came via 1066ad.com, which is operated by T. Wilson of Sheffield, UK.

Incidentally if any of the above named service providers wish to contact us, we will be only too happy to forward copies of the relevant emails. Only too happy...

So where does that leave us?
Hopefully well-cautioned is the simple answer. The money claimed in the emails probably doesn't exist. Rather than seeing loads of lovely money arriving the only thing that you will see is your own money disappearing, to be followed shortly afterwards by the email address or phone number of your Nigerian contact also disappearing.

Your chances of recovering any money are nil because your local authorities will probably be reluctant to help or simply unable to help. The chances of receiving any assistance from Nigerian authorities - assuming this is where the money goes - are also likely to be zero.

Even if all of the service providers named in this article do take action and terminate accounts, it is London to a brick that the instigators of these emails will find other mail service providers to replace them. µ

* THE US SECRET SERVICE is interested in these fraudulent emails -- there's a page here, all about it, together with an email address for you to forward complete headers and emails. And the Cyber Museum of Scams and Frauds has more information, even alleging that the Nigerian government is in on the scam.

See Also
How to become rich dot.com External
Law firm out $2.1 million in African fraud External
British businessman falls for Nigerian scam
British Labour Party "encourages spammers"
Web site baits South African spammer