Why Do Nigerian Email Scammers Still Claim to Be From Nigeria?
If you receive an email from someone claiming to be a Nigerian prince, you probably immediately know to delete it — it’s a scam, and an old one at that, predating the Internet. The scams, known as “advance fee” or “419” scams (the latter because section 419 of Nigeria’s criminal code outlaws them) tend to follow the same pattern: someone from Nigeria has untold riches they’re entitled to, but can’t access. They need a relatively small amount of money to get that access, but they don’t have that much. But if you, their stranger in shining armor, send them that money, they’ll share the riches with you.
It’s too good to be true, of course, and by now, almost everyone knows it.
Which is why it still happens.
In 2014, a researcher for Microsoft named Cormac Herley noticed something curious about 419 scams. Even though everyone knows that you shouldn’t send money to a stranger claiming to be a Nigerian looking for an advance, the scammers still often pretend to be Nigerian. Here’s how Herley sets up the situation in his paper on the topic (pdf here):
An examination of a web-site that catalogs scam emails shows that 51% mention Nigeria as the source of funds, with a further 34% mentioning Cˆote d’Ivoire, Burkina Faso, Ghana, Senegal or some other West African country. [ . . . ]
Why so little imagination? Why don’t Nigerian scammers claim to be from Turkey, or Portugal or Switzerland or New Jersey? Stupidity is an unsatisfactory answer: the scam requires skill in manipulation, considerable inventiveness and mastery of a language that is non-native for a majority of Nigerians. It would seem odd that after lying about his gender, stolen millions, corrupt officials, wicked in-laws, near-death escapes and secret safety deposit boxes that it would fail to occur to the scammer to lie also about his location. That the collection point for the money is constrained to be in Nigeria doesn’t seem a plausible reason either. If the scam goes well, and the user is willing to send money, a collection point outside of Nigeria is surely not a problem if the amount is large enough.
The reason is simple: scammers are looking for an easy mark. And if you’re ignorant enough to believe a “Nigerian prince” (or whatever the occupation du jour is), you’re probably exactly what the con artist is looking for. Or, as the Atlantic notes, “the more outlandish the story, the easier it is for the scammer to bypass skeptics and reach believers.”
Per Herley and his math — you can check it at the pdf above if you’re as skeptical of him as you would be other emailers — weeding out everyone but the most gullible is imperative to the “Nigerian”’s success: “The goal of the email is not so much to attract viable users as to repel the non-viable ones, who greatly outnumber them. Failure to repel all but a tiny fraction of non-viable users will make the scheme unprofitable.”
And to be clear, the scam can be very, very profitable. In 2009, NPR’s Planet Money interviewed the former head of Nigeria’s financial crimes division, Nuhu Ribadu. Per Ribadu, the fraudsters he prosecuted “were literally like celebrities. They were the big guys in society, sponsoring people for public office. They were the ones with convoys and big cars. They would occupy front seats at ceremonial things and social events.”
And the best part? They didn’t have to lie about where they were from. Because claiming to be Nigerian — even though in this case, it was true — was part of what made the ruse successful.
Bonus fact: As briefly noted above, 419 scams predate the advent of email and, for that matter, the founding of Nigeria — just under a different name. The con, originally known as the “Spanish Prisoner,” dates back to the early 1800s. Wikipedia’s editors explain:
In its original form, the confidence trickster tells his victim (the mark) that he is (or is in correspondence with) a wealthy person of high estate who has been imprisoned in Spain under a false identity. Some versions had the imprisoned person being an unknown or remote relative of the mark. Supposedly the prisoner cannot reveal his identity without serious repercussions and is relying on a friend (the trickster) to raise money to secure his release In this classic pigeon drop game archetype, the trickster offers to let the mark put up some of the funds, with a promise of a greater monetary reward upon release of the prisoner, and sometimes the additional reward of marrying a beautiful woman stated to be the prisoner’s daughter. After the mark has turned over the funds, he is informed further difficulties have arisen, and more money is needed. With such explanations, the trickster continues to press for more money until the victim is cleaned out, declines to put up more funds, or dies.
It’s unclear how many people were defrauded out of their money via this tactic, but as the con still exists today, there’s good reason to think it was rather successful.
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