I read with astonishment recently that despite people being advised by Australian police that an email doing the rounds was a scam, many recipients continued sending money to scammers in far away places. The police had advised individuals personally, but a significant number disregarded police advice and later lost large sums of money.
Every day I receive a score or more email messages that are clearly attempts to relieve me of my money. Criminal attempts. The most recent approaches involve job offers, a lonely female looking for love (and money), a woman happy to provide "full sexual services" if I transfer money to an overseas account, Sensor swab the now infamous "Nigerian" scam ... not always from Nigeria, and the lottery win scam.
Let's have a quick look at how these scams work.
Job Offers
Someone emails you with a job offer to earn $1,000 per week working only a few hours online. They may claim to have an electronics company or a company selling goods to buyers in your region or country. You will be go-between and receive large sums of money to be deposited and transferred overseas in due course. As an employee, you will need to send "good faith" money to them, or perhaps use your credit card to cover costs while transfers are being made. Alternatively, you will receive a cheque and be expected to make an urgent transfer before the cheque is cleared. Of course, the cheque isn't cleared and you lose your money.
Lonely Hearts
You receive an email from an African lady currently (or perhaps a man if you are female?) in a refugee centre somewhere near Darfour. She is fortunate enough to get use of the Internet owned by her local priest and is desperate for love and friendship. If you are interested, all you need do is email for photos. So you email and find an attractive woman who might well be able to satisfy some or all of your physical and emotional needs. You correspond for a while and she asks for an air fare to leave Darfour and come to the lovely, garden city where you live so she can have a new life. She will love you forever. Alternatively, when you have corresponded for a while she might ask for a loan of some money to help her uncle, mother or other relative with a serious ailment that can be remedied if only she had the money.
There are variations on this theme too and sadly, some of them could be genuine given the state of some of the African states. However, if you are to fork out your hard earned money, make sure to get full details and preferably primary evidence and third-party confirmation. (Perhaps an embassy official).
Sexual Services
When I received an email from a lady who claimed to live where I live asking me if I'd like a "date", I was intrigued, maybe a bit flattered, and curious (I don't get many offers of anything these days!). I replied to ask her where she had got my email address and why she was writing to me when there is a cornucopia of much younger, more attractive men about. In response, she sent me an Adobe PDF file with some explanatory notes about the dates she provides for $150 USD for two hour sessions. She told me about the Italian perfume and lingerie she wears, how she could help me to a wonderful release and provided several nude photos of the treasures that waited for me. The photos could best be described as "gynaecological" and yes, the photos were of a stunner with a perfectly shaped body, beautiful face, Eurasian skin and other attributes that are pulse-raising for most men. Although I'm no gynaecologist, I've studied female anatomy long enough to know what is beautiful and what isn't. Phew!, but back to the article.
The crunch with this offer is that the payment for the first date had to be transferred to an overseas bank account; all later payments could be made in cash at the time of service.
In a country where sex or even being alone with a member of the opposite sex (not a relative) where sex could take place outside marriage can get you jailed, whipped and deported, the scammers know that nobody will race off to the police and complain about being ripped off. It's almost a perfect scam and I wondered for just a moment or two why I hadn't thought of it.
Nigerian Type Scams
Ho hum, you've probably heard about these. Someone sends you an email advising that they are the son of some dignitary who has died leaving tens of millions of dollars sitting in a bank account. They need you to help bypass the local government taxation office by transferring it to your account. When the deal is done, you will receive 20% and live happily ever after. You may have to send money to them to arrange an air fare for you to attend and make the necessary documentation out or transfer an amount to help with "fees" or "corrupt" individuals which will, of course, be repaid with your commission.
Why they couldn't just extract money from the millions to cover immediate costs is anyone's guess.
Lottery Scams
Would you be surprised to know you've won a lottery for which you have never bought a ticket? No worries. The particular lottery always allocates random tickets during each draw as a social service to people. Just by luck of the draw, your ticket has come up. All you need do is send $900 USD to the handling agent and the money will be forwarded to you. Yeah, that's right.
Conclusion
If you receive an email for ANY reason that requires you to send money to someone with whom you don't have a long standing personal or business relationship that is tried and tested, it should set a red flag flying. Make enquiries to ensure the offer is genuine and traceable. Most civilised countries have consumer protection organisations that have information about scams and scammers ... look them up in Google and check out the offer you have received. Look the firm up in the Yellow Pages or other telephone directory and perhaps give them a call about the email. It's better for them to fall over laughing at you than you lose your money.
I always think it's an insult to my intelligence when I get an email purporting to be from Sanyo, Microsoft, an Australian Bank, or some other respectable firm when it comes from Yahoo, Gmail, Hotmail or some other free account. Do people really believe that intelligent people will accept this as a genuine address? What about the signature block? Does it have full details of the sender, an address, a phone number etc? What company in its right mind would send an email without proper contact details and have their own domain?
Also, the grammar and syntax is often a give-away. No respectable firm would allow an email to be sent out with the grammatical and syntactical errors that stand out in most of the scam emails. Many are written by semi-literate people or those who speak English as another language ... and it shows.
At the end of the day, if you want to save yourself financial loss and embarrassment, use some common sense when you receive email messages from people you don't know. Do some research. And, finally, if you really, really want to throw your money away, just email me and I'll give you my account details where it will be gratefully accepted into the "Robin Henry Retirement Fund".
Robin Henry is an educator, human resources specialist and Internet entrepreneur who writes articles about a wide range of topics. He comes from Alice Springs in Central Australia but is currently temporarily residing at Al Ain, near Dubai in the United Arab Emirates.
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