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For film based on this term, see The Spanish Prisoner. Key features of the Spanish Prisoner trick are the emphasis on secrecy and the trust the confidence trickster is supposedly placing in the victim not to reveal the prisoner's identity or situation. The confidence trickster will often claim to have chosen the victim carefully, based on his reputation for honesty and straight dealing, and may appear to structure the deal so that the confidence trickster's ultimate share of the reward will be distributed voluntarily by the victim. Modern variants of the Spanish Prisoner include the advance fee fraud, in particular the Nigerian money transfer fraud (or "419 fraud"). In the advance fee fraud, a valuable item must be ransomed from a warehouse, crooked customs agent, or lost baggage facility before the authorities or thieves recognize its value. In the Nigerian variation, a self-proclaimed relative of a deposed African dictator offers to transfer millions of ill-gotten dollars into the bank account of the victim in return for small initial payments to cover bribes and other expenses. The film The Spanish Prisoner, written and directed by David Mamet, includes such a confidence trick as part of the plot, as does his other film about con men, House of Games. This scam is also contained in the movie The Flim-Flam Man. Arthur Train's story "The Spanish Prisoner" was published in the March, 1910 issue of The Cosmopolitan Magazine. Advance fee fraudAn advance fee fraud is a confidence trick in which the target is persuaded to advance relatively small sums of money in the hope of realizing a much larger gain. Among the variations on this type of scam are the Nigerian Letter (419 fraud or Nigerian money offer and the Spanish Prisoner.The 419 scam originated in the early 1980s as the oil-based economy of Nigeria declined. Several unemployed university students first used this scam as a means of manipulating business visitors interested in shady deals in the Nigerian oil sector before targeting businessmen in the west, and later the wider population. Scammers in the early-to-mid 1990s targeted companies, sending scam messages via letter, fax, or Telex. The spread of email and easy access to email-harvesting software made the cost of sending scam letters through the Internet inexpensive. In the 2000s, the 419 scam has spurred imitations from other locations in Africa, Asia and Eastern Europe. The number "419" refers to the article of the Nigerian Criminal Code (part of Chapter 38: "Obtaining Property by false pretences; Cheating") dealing with fraud. The American Dialect Society has traced the term "419 fraud" back to 1992. The advance-fee fraud is similar to a much older scam known as the Spanish Prisoner scam in which the trickster would tell the scam victim that a (fictitious) rich prisoner had promised to share (non-existent) treasure with the victim if the latter would send money to bribe the prison guards. Insa Nolte, a lecturer of University of Birmingham's African Studies Department, stated that "The availability of e-mail helped to transform a local form of fraud into one of Nigeria's most important export industries." Embassies and other organizations warn visitors to various countries about 419. Countries in West Africa with warnings cited include Nigeria, Ghana, Benin, Côte d'Ivoire (Ivory Coast), Togo, Senegal and Burkina Faso. Countries outside of West Africa with 419 warnings cited include South Africa, Spain, and The Netherlands. ImplementationThis scam usually begins with a letter-form e-mail sent to many target recipients making an offer that will purportedly result in a large payoff for the intended victim. The stories behind the offers vary, but the standard plot is that a person or government entity is in possession of a large amount of money or gold. This person, for myriad reasons, either cannot access the wealth directly or is no longer in need of it. Such people, who are fictional or impersonated characters played by the scammer, could include the wife of a deposed African or Indonesian leader or dictator, a terminally ill wealthy person, a wealthy foreigner who had deposited money in the bank just before dying in a plane crash (leaving no will or known next of kin), a U.S. soldier who has stumbled upon a hidden cache of gold, a business being audited by the government, a disgruntled worker or corrupt government official who has embezzled funds, a refugee, and similar characters. The money could be in the form of gold bullion, gold dust, money in a bank account, so-called "blood diamonds", a series of cheques or bank drafts, and so forth. The sums involved are usually in the millions of dollars, and the investor is promised a large share, often forty percent or more, if they will assist the scam character in retrieving the money from holding and/or dispense of it according to the scam character's wishes. The proposed deal is often presented as a "harmless" white-collar crime, in order to dissuade participants from later contacting the authorities.In plane crash scams, fraudsters often use names of real people who died in air disasters; one con man used the names of Ronald and Joyce Lake, victims of Alaska Airlines Flight 261, in a scam letter received by Seattle Post-Intelligencer staff member Phuong Cat Le. Many operations are professionally organized in Nigeria, with offices, working fax numbers, and often contacts at government offices. The victim who attempts to research the background of the offer will often find that all pieces fit perfectly together. Such scammers can often lure wealthy investors, investment groups, or other business entities into scams resulting in multi-million dollar losses. However, many scammers are part of less organized gangs or are operating independently; such scammers have reduced access to the above connections and thus have little success with wealthier investors or business entities attempting to research them, but are still convincing to middle-class individuals and small businesses, and can bilk hundreds of thousands of dollars from such victims. If the victim agrees to the deal, the other side will often send one or more false documents bearing official government stamps, and seals. 419 scammers often mention false addresses and use photographs taken from the internet or from magazines to falsely represent themselves. Often a photograph used by a scammer is not of any person involved in the scheme. Multiple "people" involved in schemes are fictitious; the author of the "WEST AFRICAN ADVANCE FEE SCAMS" article posted on the website of the Embassy of the United States in Abidjan, Côte d'Ivoire believes that in many cases one person controls many fictitious personas used in scams. A scammer will introduce a delay or monetary hurdle that prevents the deal from occurring as planned, such as "in order to transmit the money, we need to bribe a bank official. Could you help us with a loan?" or "In order for you to be allowed to be a party to the transaction, you need to have holdings at a Nigerian bank of $100,000 or more" or similar. More delays and more additional costs are added, always keeping the promise of an imminent large transfer alive, convincing the victim that the money they are currently paying will be covered several times over by the payoff. Sometimes psychological pressure is added by claiming that the Nigerian side, in order to pay certain fees, had to sell all belongings and borrow money on their house, or by pointing out the different salary scale and living conditions in Africa compared to the West. Much of the time, however, the needed psychological pressure is self-applied; once the victims have put money in toward the payoff, they feel they have a vested interest in seeing the "deal" through. Some victims believe that they can cheat the con artist. The essential fact in all advance fee fraud operations is that the promised money transfer never happens because the money or gold does not exist. The perpetrators rely on the fact that, by the time the victim realizes this (often only after being confronted by a third party who has noticed the transactions or conversation and recognized the scam), the victim may have sent thousands of dollars of their own money, and sometimes thousands or millions more that has been borrowed or stolen, to the scammer. The spam e-mails perpetrating these scams are often sent from Internet cafés equipped with satellite Internet. Recipient addresses and email content are copied and pasted into a webmail interface using a standalone storage medium, such as a memory card. Many areas of Lagos, such as Festac, contain many shady cyber cafés that serve scammers; many cyber cafés seal their doors during afterhours, such as from 10:30 PM to 7:00 AM, so that scammers inside may work without fear of discovery. Nigeria also contains many businesses that provide false documents used in scams; after a scam involving a forged signature of Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo in summer 2005, Nigerian authorities raided a market in the Oluwole section of Lagos. The police seized thousands of Nigerian and non-Nigerian passports, 10,000 blank British Airways boarding passes, 10,000 United States money orders, customs documents, false university certificates, 500 printing plates, and 500 computers. During the courses of many schemes, scammers ask victims to supply bank account information. Usually this is a "test" devised by the scammer to gauge the victim's gullibility. Scammers often request that payments be made using a wire transfer service like Western Union and Moneygram. The reason given by the scammer will usually relate to the speed at which the payment can be received and processed, allowing quick release of the supposed payoff. The real reason is that wire transfers and similar methods of payment are irreversible, untraceable and, because identification beyond knowledge of the details of the transaction is often not required, completely anonymous. Telephone numbers used by scammers tend to come from mobile phones. In Côte d'Ivoire (Ivory Coast) a scammer may purchase an inexpensive mobile phone and a pre-paid SIM card without submitting subscriber information. If the scammers believed they are being traced, they throw their mobile phones into wastebaskets and purchase new mobile phones. In Benin Nigerians operate scams with Beninese cooperating in the schemes. Some crime syndicates employ fraudsters in the United States who conclude "deals" or threaten victims who try to leave deals. Web-based e-mailBecause many free e-mail services do not require valid identifying information, and also allow communication with many marks 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 source IP address, making the scammer completely untraceable even to country of origin.These services, when notified of an address being used illegitimately, are generally quick to suspend the account, however because a scammer can create as many accounts as he or she wishes and often has several active at one time, finding and shutting down scammer accounts presents only a minor hindrance to scammer operations. E-mail hijacking/friend scamsSome fraudsters hijack existing e-mail accounts and use them for advance fee fraud purposes. The fraudsters e-mail associates, friends, and/or family members of the legitimate account owner in an attempt to defraud them. This ruse generally requires the use of phishing or keylogger computer viruses to gain login information for the e-mail address.Fake websitesThough 419 scams are often perpetrated by e-mail alone, some scammers enhance the believability of their offer through the use of a sham website. Such websites can imitate real sites such as eBay, PayPal or a banking site like Bank Of America for the purposes of phishing, while others are totally fictional and used to lend credibility to a scammer's story. Though phishing is only a secondary interest of most scam operations, as the object of the scammer is to deceive the mark into sending the money through legitimate means, the use of websites for advance fee fraud is common. For instance, a scammer may create a website for a fictional bank, then give the victim details to login to the site, where the victim then sees the money that the scammer has promised sitting in the account. The victim is then more likely to believe the scammer and send the requested advance payments. Fake (or hijacked) websites are the centerpiece of false online storefront scams.Another twist on scamming involves providing links to real news sites covering events the scammer says are relevant to the transaction they propose. For instance, a scammer may use news of the death of a prominent government official as a backstory for a scam involving getting millions of dollars of the slain official's money out of the country. These are real websites covering legitimate news, but the scammer is usually not connected in any way with the events reported, and is simply using the story to gain the victim's sympathy. Yet another, more elaborate form of scams involving fake websites is to actually copy a real, well-known website, then use it on a different domain name to gain the mark's confidence. This is the case of Royal Dutch Shell, whose website was copied by Nigerian scammers: Fake Shell Nigeria website Charity scamsThe scammer poses as a charitable organization soliciting donations to help the victims of a natural disaster, terrorist attack (such as the Sept. 11 World Trade Center attack), regional conflict, or epidemic. Hurricane Katrina and the 2004 tsunami were popular targets of scammers perpetrating charity scams; other more timeless scam charities purport to be raising money for cancer, AIDS or Ebola virus research, or impersonate charities such as the Red Cross or United Way. The scammer asks for donations, often linking to online news articles to strengthen their story of a funds drive. The scammer's victims are charitable people who believe they are helping a worthy cause and expect nothing in return. Once sent, the money is gone and the scammer often disappears, though many will attempt to keep the scam going by asking for a series of payments. The victim may sometimes find themselves in legal trouble after deducting their supposed donations from their income taxes. United States tax law states that charitable donations are only deductible if made to a qualified non-profit organization[35]. The scammer may tell the victim their donation is deductible and provide all necessary proof of donation, but the information provided by the scammer is fictional, and if audited, the victim faces stiff penalties as a result of the fraud. Though these scams have some of the highest success rates especially following a major disaster, and are employed by scammers all over the world, the average loss per victim is less than other fraud schemes. This is because, unlike scams involving a large expected payoff, the victim is far less likely to borrow money to donate or donate more than they can spare.In a related variant, the scammer will pose as a terminally ill mother, poor university student, or other down-on-their-luck person and simply beg the mark for money for college tuition, to sponsor their children, or a similar ruse. The money, they say, will be repaid plus interest by some third party at a later date (often these third parties are some fictitious agency of the Nigerian government, or the scammer themself once a payment from someone else is made available to them). Once the victim starts paying money to the scammer, the scammer will tell the victim that additional money is needed for unforeseen expenses, similar to most other variants; in the case of the ill mother, the children will fall ill as well and require money for a doctor's care and medicine (many scammers go as far as to say that as the sponsor of the children, the victim is legally liable for such costs), where the student might claim that a dormitory fire destroyed everything they own. Invitation to visit the countrySometimes, victims are invited to a country to meet real or fake government officials. Some victims who do travel are instead held for ransom. In some rumored cases they are smuggled into the country without a visa and then threatened into giving up more money, as the penalties for being in a foreign country without a visa are severe. Sometimes victims are ransomed or killed.Terms used by 419-scammers:Fall mugu (to) - To be fooled, to become victim of advance fee fraud.
Flash of account
Format
Guyman, guy
Jokeman
Maga, mugu, mugun, mahi, magha, mahee, mayi, mayee, mgbada(antelope)
Modalities
Oga or Chairman
Owner of the job, Catcher
Runs
Yahoo millionaires, yahoo boys
Yahoo yahoo Common elements:
Consequences:
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The Spanish Prisoner is a confidence trick dating back to the early 1900s. In its original form, the confidence trickster (con-man) tells his victim (the mark) that he is in correspondence with a wealthy person of high estate who has been imprisoned in Spain under a false identity. The alleged prisoner cannot reveal his identity without serious repercussions, and is relying on the confidence trickster to raise money to secure his release. The confidence trickster offers to let the victim supply some of the money, with a promise that he will be rewarded generously when the prisoner returns; financially and perhaps also by being married to the prisoner's beautiful daughter. However, once the victim has turned over his money, he learns that further difficulties have arisen, requiring more money, and the trickster continues attempts to get more money until the victim is cleaned out and the process ends, presumably with the victim realizing he has been robbed and that there is no rich man, no reward coming to him.