Advanced Fee Scam by Phone

I recently got a phone call telling me that I had been randomly awarded a $95,000 US government grant. Judging from the accent of the caller and the background noise I think it came from a boiler room operation in India somewhere, possibly the same one that keeps calling me to try to persuade me to install malware because they have detected a virus on my Windows computer. (Mine is an all Apple household.) I did what I usually do with nuisance calls. I sounded as interested and gullible as possible, and then said, "Wait a minute, someone's just come to the door, let me put you on hold, I'll be right back." Then I hit the mute button and ignored the phone till the operator got bored and frustrated and hung up. If they are going to waste my time, I'm going to waste as much as possible of theirs. It's a small victory, but it makes be happy. Of course, this was just a variant on the 419 scam, also called "Nigerian Gold" or "The Spanish Prisoner". (419 is the section in Nigeria's criminal code that deals with this.) The victim is promised riches, but first they have to put some money in up front... increasingly large sums as it turns out. In the event they are really gullible, they may eventually be lured to Nigeria (originally Spain) and kidnapped for ransom. This con trick dates back to the 16th Century. The New York Times was referring to it as "An Old Swindle" in 1898.

A hundred years later, in 1998, 419 scammers turned to email to try to find victims. I have to say, it was actually very satisfying to find this scam is now also coming from an Indian call center. That's so much more expensive than email, so it means email is not as cost effective as it was. Good spam filters, plus increasing public awareness of this con trick, are forcing the criminals to try other means. I don't think this particular scam is ever going to go away, but the more expensive and hard we can make it to recruit marks, the fewer marks there will be.