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Beware of 4-1-9 Scams

© Philip M. Orbach

I received an interesting e-mail message the other day. "I will begin by soliciting your strictest confidence in this transaction," it began. "This is by its nature being utterly confidential and top secret. I am DR. ADEWOLE AREMU, the financial controller of the late Nigeria head of state General Sani Abacha who died on the 8th of June 1998. Before the federal budget of the 1996 fiscal year was announced, an account was open to take care of his miscellaneous expenses." The message goes on to explain this secret bank account holds $38 million. Because of a variety of reasons this money is now rightly Dr. Aremu's. He is soliciting my help to retrieve it. Specifically he'll need to funnel the money through my personal bank account. For my help I'll be given a whopping 25% of the loot.

This is just one of they many scams originating from Nigeria which are commonly referred to in law enforcement as "4-1-9 Scams." 4-1-9 is the section in the Nigerian Penal Code which deals with this crime. Once again that age-old advice "don't talk to strangers" couldn't ring truer, especially in Cyberspace. After making contact with the victim, the scam artist starts asking for personal information he'll need to complete the transaction. With this information in hand he is well equipped to complete lots of creative schemes, all with same goal: to steal money. Be extremely cautious of these scams, as by their very nature scam artists are experts at deception. Whether through using legal-like language or by providing authentic looking fraudulent documents "4-1-9 scams" have been thriving on the Internet.

To give you an idea of just how creative these scam artists can be consider the "Black Money Scams." The backgrounds behind these scams vary but the one thing they have in common is the scam artist claims to deliver the victim a trunk full of money. Because the money was smuggled out of Nigeria it was dyed black. A dye cleaning solution can be applied to the bills to remove the black dye. Now that's all fine and dandy but here's the catch. The cleaning solution is quite expensive and the scam artist wants the victim to provide payment for the solution up front. To "prove" their case the scammer asks the victim to "pick a bill, any bill?" The scam artist then uses the same slight-of-hand technique used for popular card tricks. He washes off the dye revealing a real bill. Too bad for the victim all the other "bills" are just black paper. But the scam artist will be long gone before the victim figures that out.

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