Ooooooooh dear!
The African Scammers have got a hold of one of my website email addresses. Apparently, there are loads of African officials who have loadsa money that they want to get out of their countries (mainly Nigeria) and they need MY help. For my efforts I'll get a share of the loot ... I could be a millionaire in no time at all for very little effort!

So ..... why am I still so poor?
Well, it's partly because I'm a rather cautious fellow, but mainly because I know that these offers are pure criminal SCAMS. I received my first one from Nigeria by snail mail over ten years ago, when I was managing a company in Cornwall, England. At that time I was encouraged to forward it to the UK Government's Department of Trade and Industry to help their anti-fraud operation.

What's the scam?
Well, the hopeful "officials" (who use cyber-cafes in their home-towns) need to pay kickbacks to get the money out. For that they will need your help, i.e. your money. They will usually start out by asking for an advanced fee, transfer tax, handling charges or other excuses for robbing you, even though they often profess to be devout Christians and mention their utmost faith in God (their god is obviously Mammon). If you are foolish enough to come up with the readies then you'll find that there are more fees that need to be shelled out for before you can get your hands on the fabulous fortune.

Officially, this scam is known around the world as 419 (Four-One-Nine), after the section of the Nigerian penal code which addresses the issue of Advance Fee Fraud (AFF) and is reckoned to be around the fourth largest industry in Nigeria. The latest unverified statistics show that gullible men and women around the world have lost over ONE BILLION DOLLARS to this scam!

I found the 419 emails so funny (especially their background information and the grammar) that, in the end,  I decided to share these SCAMS for other people's amusement and as a warning to anyone who receives similar emails and may be tempted to "get-rich-quick". On the left is a selection of the emails I've received. They are "as received" (except I've removed the To address, to save me further problems).

• Bogus online auctions, where the items purchased are never delivered.
• Deliberate misrepresentation or non-delivery of general merchandise purchased online.
• Nigerian money offers.
• Deliberate misrepresentation or non-delivery of computer equipment or software purchased online.
• Internet access scams, where bogus internet service providers fraudulently charge for services that were never ordered or received.
• Credit card or telephone charges for services that were never ordered or misrepresented as free. These often include charges for accessing 'adult' material.
• Work-at-home schemes promising wildly exaggerated sales and profits.
• Advance fee loans, where consumers are duped into paying upfront charges for loans which never materialise.
• Phoney offers of cheap-rate credit card deals, once again on payment of upfront fees.
• Business opportunities or franchises sold on the basis of exaggerated profit estimates.

Last year the European Commission said that online shopping sites had contributed to a 50% rise in credit card fraud in the European Union during 2000.