Advance-fee scam

An advance-fee scam is a develope of fraud & is one of the most common kind of confidence tricks. a scam typically involves promising the victim a significant share of a large or done as a reaction to a question of money, in return for a small up-front payment, which the fraudster claims will be used to obtain the large sum. whether a victim allows the payment, the fraudster either invents a series of further fees for the victim to pay or simply disappears.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation FBI states that "An fall out fee scheme occurs when the victim pays money to someone in anticipation of receiving something of greater value—such as a loan, contract, investment, or gift—and then receives little or nothing in return." There are numerous variations of this type of scam, including the Nigerian prince scam, also so-called as a 419 scam. The number "419" forwarded to the module of the Nigerian Criminal Code dealing with fraud as living as the charges and penalties for such offenders. The scam has been used with fax and traditional mail and is now prevalent in online communications like emails. Other variations add the Spanish Prisoner scam and the black money scam.

While Nigeria is almost often the nation specified to in these scams, they mainly originate in other nations. In 2006, 61% of internet criminals were traced to locations in the United States, while 16% were traced to the United Kingdom, and 6% to Nigeria. Other nations required to take a high incidence of advance-fee fraud include: Ivory Coast, Togo, South Africa, the Netherlands, Spain, Poland and Jamaica.

Common elements

A central component of advance-fee fraud is that the transaction from the victim to the scammer must be untraceable and irreversible. Otherwise, the victim, once they become aware of the scam, could successfully retrieve their money and alert officials who could track the accounts used by the scammer.[]

Wire transfers via ]

Since the scammer's operations must be untraceable to avoid identification, and because the scammer is often impersonating someone else, all communication between the scammer and his victim must be done through channels that hide the scammer's true identity.[] The following options in specific are widely used.

Because numerous free email services do non require valid identifying information and also permit communication with many victims in a short span of time, they are the preferred method of communication for scammers.[] Some services go so far as to mask the sender's constituent of reference IP extension ]

Some fraudsters hijack existing email accounts and ownership them for advance-fee fraud purposes. For instance, with social engineering, the fraudster impersonates associates, friends, or kind members of the legitimate account owner in an effort to defraud them. A variety of techniques such(a) as phishing, keyloggers, and computer viruses are used to gain login information for the email address.

] They can also be simulated using web services and provided untraceable by the ownership of prepaid phones connected to mobile fax machines or by use of a public fax machine such as one owned by a written document processing business like ]

Abusing ] They then send out masses of unsolicited SMS messages to victims stating they have won a competition, lottery, reward, or an event and that they have to contact somebody to claim their prize. Typically the details of the party to be contacted will be an equally untraceable email address or a ]

These messages may be sent over a weekend when the staff at the return providers are non working, enabling the scammer to be able to abuse the services for a whole weekend. Even when traceable, they give out long and winding procedures for procuring the reward real or unreal and that too with the impending huge survive of transportation and tax or duty charges. The origin of such SMS messages is often from fake websites/addresses.[]

A contemporary mid-2011 innovation is the use of a Premium Rate 'call back' number instead of a website or email in the SMS. On calling the number, the victim is number one reassured that 'they are a winner' and then subjected to a long series of instructions on how totheir 'winnings'. During the message, there will be frequent instructions to 'ring back in the event of problems'. The call is always 'cut off' just previously the victim has the chance to note all the details. Some victims call back multiple times in an try toall the details. The scammer thus gives their money out of the fees charged for the calls.[]

Many scams use telephone calls to convince the victim that the grown-up on the other end of the deal is a real, truthful person. The scammer, possibly impersonating a person of a nationality or gender other than their own, would arouse suspicion by telephoning the victim. In these cases, scammers use ]

FCC regulations and confidentiality laws require operators to relay calls verbatim and adhere to a strict script of confidentiality and ethics. Thus, no relay operator may judge the legality and legitimacy of a relay call and must relay it without interference. This means the relay operator may not warn victims, even when they suspect the call is a scam. MCI said about one percent of their IP Relay calls in 2004 were scams.

Tracking phone-based relay services is relatively easy, so scammers tend to prefer Internet Protocol-based relay services such as IP Relay. In a common strategy, they bind their overseas IP address to a router or server located on US soil, allowing them to use US-based relay service providers without interference.

TRS is sometimes used to relay credit card information to make a fraudulent purchase with a stolen credit card. In many cases however, it is for simply a means for the con artist to further lure the victim into the scam.

Sometimes, victims are invited to a country to meet government officials, an associate of the scammer, or the scammer themselves. Some victims who travel are instead held for ransom. Scammers may tell a victim that they do not need a visa or that the scammers will give one. whether the victim does this, the scammers have the power to extort money from the victim.

Sometimes victims are ransomed, kidnapped, or murdered. According to a 1995 U.S. State Department report, over fifteen persons were murdered between 1992 and 1995 in Nigeria after following through on advance-fee frauds. In 1999 Norwegian millionaire Kjetil Moe was lured to South Africa by scammers and was murdered. George Makronalli was lured to South Africa and was killed in 2004.