BEWARE A VIRTUAL BANK SCAM!

THE MOST familiar Nigerian scam is an e-mail offering lots of free money in exchange for helping someone with a name like Barrister Richard Okoya. The offer varies, but the theme is the same — help a downtrodden victim recover a large sum of money trapped in an overseas bank, and you will be rewarded handsomely.
For most, the e-mails are the butt of jokes and evoke a “Who would ever fall for that?” reaction.
There are now so many flavours of Nigerian scams, they are harder and harder to recognise, he said. Many even avoid the trademark details: the barrister, the overseas bank, or even the typical up-front wire payment.
“(Nigerians) are just great at social engineering. They keep finding new victims,” Dale Miskall, supervisory special agent in charge of an FBI cybercrime squad in Birmingham, Ala. said. “And internet users are very gullible.”
There are plenty of variations on the traditional scam. Nigerians apparently keep up with the news. In 2001, instead of a Nigerian barrister, the missing money belonged to an Iraqi national, persecuted under Saddam Hussein. The year before, it was a family of victims of the Concorde plane crash. Earlier this year, it was a tsunami victim; then, a US soldier killed in Iraq during the war on terror. Anything to get an edge, or to catch victims with their guard down.
“This really is one of the worst e-mail scams we’ve ever seen, targeting the families of American soldiers killed in Iraq,” said Michael Garcia, an assistant secretary with the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, about the Iraq soldier email. “This is really despicable.”
But Nigerian scams stretch far wider than e-mails asking for help, moving money out of international accounts. In a much more elaborate version of the crime, scammers participate in legitimate online auctions, finish with the high bid, and send along a cheque to pay for the winnings.
The payment often arrives as a cashier’s cheque, thought to be as good as cash by many US residents. It’s not.
The criminal sends more than the winning amount and asks for some to be wired back. When victims, apparently, successfully deposit the cashier’s cheque, they figure the buyer is legit, and wire the average, often to a bank account in Nigeria. Weeks later, the bank discovers the cashier’s check is bogus, and the depositor is responsible for the missing funds. Often, the victim is cheated both from the merchandise and the money.
In another variation, Nigerians offer to donate money to charities they find online; then, they follow the same tactic. A too-big cheque is sent and a partial refund requested.
The key to the continuing Nigerian success, Miskall says, is the ingenuity and adaptability of the scam artists. An even more insidious version involves Internet seduction. Scam artists lurk in chat rooms with names like ‘40 and single’, or ‘Recently dumped’. They reach out to a lonely woman, send flowers or candy, purchased with a stolen credit card. Eventually, they convince the new girlfriend to do them a big favour — help transfer funds out of the bank.

5 WAYS TO AVOID THE SCAM

Avoid wire transfers

Use a search engine. If it’s a scam, it’s likely someone else on the Internet will have published a complaint

Use the telephone. Nigerians will be very reluctant to give out a phone number and will try to negotiate most of the transaction over e-mail. That buys them time to answer hard questions

Verify the legitimacy of a bank

Always use a credit card. Consumers have wide protection when paying for Internet-based transactions with a credit card. Cheques are easily forged

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