419 is the loneliest number

I probably will not have time to update my blog tomorrow (6-7-2011), so I thought I would do it tonight.

Also - a correction to the previous day's blog - I meant to say at one point Enron was the 7th largest company in America, not in the world.

Anyway, let's put Enron aside for a while.  Don't worry - we'll get back to it.  It's too tempting a target.

Well, let's get to the inevitable.  It's impossible to talk about fraud without speaking about the infamous, ever famous "Nigerian" scam.  You know about what I am speaking.  If you have not received some variation of this email, you will at some point in your life:

"Dear Sir:  having consulted with my colleagues in the Nigerian Oil Industry, I have the privilege to request your assistance to transfer the sum of $50,000,000.00 (FIFTY MILLION DOLLARS) into your account.  We are ready to transfer these funds.  But, we need your help.  In return for your assistance, we will split this as follows: 75% for us, 5% for processing fees, 20% for you."

    This is, of course, an abbreviated version of an email that normally takes up several pages with various platitudes and highfalutin' language graciously thanking the recipient for their time, telling them how they will be made rich, etc., etc.  Like I said, if you have not received such an email yet, consider yourself very lucky (or you don't check your email all that often)

    These fraud schemes are known in popular terms as "Nigerian" frauds, although the more correct term is "419" frauds, since this is the section of the Nigerian penal code that addresses fraud schemes.

   How do these frauds work?  Let's examine it, step by step.

   The first step, of course, is that a person receives the email.

   The second step, is that the person, or I guess the "mark" ANSWERS the email.  And so begins a chain of events that will end with the mark losing a lot of money.  Let's stop here for now, and we will move onto part 3 of the scam on the next post.

  Here is also a rundown of the scam from the Snopes website: http://www.snopes.com/fraud/advancefee/nigeria.asp

   We will examine this more in detail on the next post.

In the meantime, as always, have a great and fraud-free day.

--------------->>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>gene tausk