The news on the BBC on Thursday that the Spanish police had arrested 87 Nigerians in and around Madrid, suspected of defrauding thousands of people in the United States and Europe of over 20 million euros (US$31,807,929.76 or $6.4 billion) in a postal and internet lottery scam, was astounding because it should not have happened.
This swindle and variations of it have been around for a long time and there have been many warnings issued about it.
But even if people had not heard the warnings, what about the caveat that things which appear too good to be true usually are.
In the Nigerian/Spanish scam, according to the BBC, the number of those defrauded could run into many thousands, as most of them would not have reported the crime because they were too embarrassed. The operation to track down the gang began in May last year after thousands of identical letters addressed to people in Europe and the USA were discovered. In the crackdown this week, the police confiscated hundreds of computers, mobile phones, 60,000 letters and a suitcase full of fake $100 notes which they say was used to convince those victims who travelled to Spain in person to collect their “prize money”.
The way the sting worked, was that the con men/women would write letters or emails to hundreds of people, whose addresses they most likely got from trawling online, where a surprising number of people post accurate personal information about themselves. The letter advised the recipient that s/he had won a huge sum of money in a lottery in which his/her email had been randomly entered in a draw and selected. The recipient was then asked to contact a third party or to send their details. Somehow, and only those scammed would know exactly how, it got to where the victim was asked to send a fraction of the millions of pounds or euros s/he supposedly won, to cover administrative costs. Of course, once that money was sent off, the victim never heard from the ‘lottery administrators’ again and emails sent in query bounced back undelivered.
In some cases, the investigators found, victims who made contact with the con artists and then wavered, were actually sent postal money orders for the sums they were due to receive and having received them they in turn sent off cheques or money orders of their own. They later discovered, according to the investigations, that the money orders were counterfeit.
In variations of this fraud, the victim was told that the sender of the letter or email was the administrator of the estate of some wealthy person who had died and not left an heir; or some other such unlikely story. The victim was promised a substantial portion of the “inheritance” if s/he sent enough to cover costs to get the money transferred.
Sometimes the con artists used English names, but most often, the email or letter was from someone with an African-sounding name. And the Spanish police said that thousands of letters and e-mails, most of which were written in ungrammatical English, were being sent out every day.
Almost everyone who has an email address would have received one of these letters in their ‘junk’ mail folder at some point, unless they have an extremely secure filter in place. And any right thinking individual would let such ‘junk’ mail, remain right there, which makes one wonder how it is that an Anglican Bishop was among those duped, according to the BBC.
The reason why these schemes succeed is not so much because there are still that many gullible people around, but because there are far too many greedy ones. Appeals to collecting money we haven’t earned by working hard, purchasing a lottery ticket, or being a rightful heir to speak to us on that base level that many people would not readily admit to, but which greed, one of the seven vices or seven deadly sins brings us to.
The people who perpetrate these rip-offs are familiar with greed; it is why they sat down and dreamed up such scams in the first place. They have also, believe it or not, made a study of human nature. They know that despite the warnings there will be those whose avarice will allow them to be drawn in.
But these swindles are not the only current example of human greed.
Another one, which is available for public perusal once a week, is the television reality game show ‘Deal or no Deal’ on the American network NBC. In the show, an individual, who usually has a pressing financial need, is offered the opportunity to win US$1 million. At varying stages of the game, s/he is offered different sums of money — some of the offers are quite attractive – and asked whether s/he would take the deal. The show is billed as a game of “nerves, instincts and raw intuition” and maybe in some very few instances it is. But more often than not, greedy contestants who have not put a cent of their own money into the show, will not take the deal, no matter how attractive it is, as long as large sums remain in play on the board and end up leaving with nothing at all.
It is because of this human failing that the Nigerian/Spanish swindle or a variation of it will surface again in a few months or years and will most likely succeed again.
