A few people on the list have been asking recently about the 'Nigerian scam' and as I have received some offers also, it seems likely that the list members' emails have been harvested, so I think it would be a good idea if I wrote about the '419 scam' briefly.
In one form or another this scam has been going on since, believe it or not, the sixteenth century. People in England would receive a letter from a prisoner in Spain who claimed that he was a distant foreign relation. He would ask for help as he was currently imprisoned in Spain and was worried that, with his failing health, there would be no-one to act as guardian for his young daughter who was being kept in a nunnery. The reason he was requesting the (supposed) distant relative's help was to retrieve a large amount of treasure, the payroll (in gold coins) which the Prisoner and his cohorts had stolen during the Cuban Mutiny and buried. The only map to the whereabouts of the loot had been hidden in a hollow desk. However the desk was now part of a consignment of furniture being held in a bonded warehouse and was liable to be sold off if the bonding fees where not paid. If the relative could just send the money for the fees to a cohort (usually a priest) they could all be wildly wealthy. With some variation this scam has gone on and on. If the sucker actually sends money then there will be another expense (perhaps a boat fare or a bribe to a customs official) and so-on. The psychology is a simple one of greed and of the sucker being willing to throw good money after bad. The modern incarnation, the Nigerian Oil Millions scam, works on the same principles but using modern communications. Email and faxes are used widely, while many thousands of letters are sent every year. In fact, I read an article that something like a quarter of all Nigeria's outgoing mail is shredded due to the detection of fake postage stamps. There are numerous good web-pages on the 419 scam, such as http://home.rica.net/alphae/419coal/ http://www.quatloos.com/cm-niger/cm-niger.htm and so on. I urge everyone to read them and protect yourself against this scam. New Books at Discount Prices --- Send the right message --- + Today freemail + Get your free, private email address at http://www.today.com.au --- You are currently subscribed to e-gold-list as: archive@jab.org To unsubscribe send a blank email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] Use e-gold's Secure Randomized Keyboard (SRK) when accessing your e-gold account(s) via the web and shopping cart interfaces to help thwart keystroke loggers and common viruses.
