The Nigerian Scam is a real fraud which costs its victims anywhere between
a few thousand dollars up to hundreds of thousands. It's been around for a
long time now – we can distinctly remember receiving one by post, then when
fax machines were introduced by fax, and finally on a weekly basis by email.
One popped out of our toaster, but we are not sure about the details.
The scam involves the old trick of suggesting to recipients the possibility
of coming into possession of very large sums of money, and getting them to
pay a much smaller fee to start the process off. A precursor to the modern
variant appeared in Europe many years ago, when hundreds of people would receive
letters saying a person with their name had passed away leaving behind an undisclosed
fortune. Initial research, the letter continued, had shown that the recipient
might be eligible to inherit part or all of the fortune. If they wanted the
case to be pursued they needed to fill out a form and pay a small fee – typically
$20 to $200. Naturally the scam artists were after this money, nothing else.
The particularly insidious part of the scam was the ease with which it was
executed and the difficulty of stopping the perpetrators. For instance there
would always be a genuine death – the scammers would simply take someone from
the newspaper obituaries and write to people with matching names in the telephone
directories. That was incidentally the "initial research" they had done. And
of course the fortune of the deceased was genuinely undisclosed – to them.
So this was essentially a simple mailing action which netted a considerably
sum from people with a "what-the-heck" attitude who paid up for a lottery chance
to get at some easy money.
The Nigerian scam (also known as the "Advance Fee Fraud" scheme) is more sophisticated
and goes for bigger individual returns. The excellent web site Snopes.com
explains how it works. Letters or e-mail messages postmarked from Nigeria,
Sierra Leone, or the Ivory Coast, are sent to addresses taken from large mailing
lists. The letters promise rich rewards for helping officials of the national
government (or bank, or quasi-government agency or sometimes just members of
a particular family) out of an embarrassment or a legal problem. Typically,
the pitch includes securing multi-million dollar sums, with the open promise
that you will be permitted to keep a startling percentage of the funds you're
going to aid in squirreling away for the disadvantaged foreigners.
Should
anyone agree to participate in the financial bail-out, something will go wrong.
Paperwork will be delayed. Questions will be asked. Officials will need to
be bribed. Money from you — an insignificant sum, really, in light of the windfall
about to land in your lap — will be required to get things back on track. You
pay, you wait for the transfer . . . and all you'll get in return are more
excuses about why the funds are being held up and assurances that everything
can be straightened out if you'll just send a bit more cash to help the process
along. Once your bank account has been sucked dry or you start making threats,
you'll never hear from these Nigerians again. As for the money you've thrown
at this, it's gone forever.
The Nigerian scam is hugely successful. In 1997 people just in the US were
taken in to the tune of around $100 million. This is not counting those cases
in which the victims were too embarrassed to report their losses. Snopes tells
us that the earliest incarnation of the scam dates to the 1920s. For anyone
who is really interested in the subject we can recommend the following wonderful
article by Douglas Cruickshank: I
crave your distinguished indulgence (and all your cash).
The Nigerian Chess Scam
The Advance Fee Fraud can be seen in many different forms, always with the
same basic principle: you stand to make a very large amount of money, if you
are only prepared to invest a small sum to get things going. After producing
countless variants the scam artists have at last turned their attention to
chess, as our brother site, Chess
Drum, is reporting.
According to the Chess
Drum article chess players have in the past couple of weeks started to
receive messages, purportedly from the Nigerian Chess Federation, which has
set up the "Nigerian Chess Trainers Committee (NCTC)" and is now recruiting
trainers for their national team. This is what you can expect if you are one
of the lucky appointees (original orthography): "The welfare of the chess trainers
would be catered for by NCF and their flight tickects to Nigeria would be arranged
by the Nigerian Embassy. The trainers would be lodged in Sheraton hotels Lagos
for their 2weeks stay and would each be paid $8000 for their 2weeks stay. After
this 2weeks any trainer that decides he wants to stay would still be catered
for by NCF, he or she would be moved to his or her own apartment, would be
paid $12000 monthly and would be given citizenship."
Not a bad deal, and one which is bound to have underpaid chess masters salivating.
There is of course the usual tiny little problem: you need to send your name,
address, bio data, fide rating and your qualifications as a chess trainer –
and a $980.00 fee to cover your work permit.
Naturally this is an Advanced Fee scam, as Olape
Bunmi from Nigeria has confirmed (if indeed confirmation is needed). So
chess trainers, masters, enthusiasts beware: the only thing you can get out
of this tempting offer is a $980 hole in your bank account. There is no such
thing as a free lunch, and even more emphatically no such thing as a $150,000
chess training job.
Postscript
We have just learnt, from Dr Daaim Shabazz of The Chess Drum, that there is
a web
site mentioned in the scam messages that has been set up using
material and pictures from ChessBase news reports (e.g. reactions
to Kasparov's retirement). "I have visited the website," writes Daaim.
"They have copied content from various chess sites without providing proper
citation. In addition they are also presenting this site as a representation
of the Nigerian Chess Federation. I know several players from Nigeria and a
couple of the administrators and I can assure you that they would not erect
a site so poor in quality... minus the national colors no less! To protect
the integrity of our beleaguered sport as well as those of us trying to promote
chess, we need to stand against such actions lest chess will continue to suffer
public image problems."