Are Advance Fee Fraud (419 Scam) Victims Driven By Greed?
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Everyday we hear stories about different scams and all their dubious tricks. Just yesterday I received an email at work warning us not to give our information to any company who sends us an email telling us to click a link to update our account information. The most talked about of these cons is the 419 scam by “Nigerians”. 419 is the Nigerian Criminal code section for Advance Fee Fraud. For those who do not know, Nigerians have been crowded as the number one perpetrator of this fraud.
A few months ago CNN featured a story about Nigerians in Houston and alleged that 94% of Nigerians living in Houston are 419ers. Where they got their data from is still very questionable? CNN show was followed by 20/20 investigation story on 419ers, and about undercover detectives cracking down on them. The show explained that Nigerians referred to duped American or British people as “mugu”. As if this was not enough it even went to the extent of featuring the Nigerian musician singing “I go chop your dollar” portraying the song as encouraging 419ers to do whatever they do best.
The final straw was Oprah Winfrey’s show “What the New Scam Artists Don’t Want You to Know”. The show included the 20/20 host talking about their 419 busts and it included a woman who was supposedly a “victim” of 419 scam. Oprah depicted the woman as an innocent person who was scammed in the process of helping a poor man all the way in Nigeria that needed surgery. The woman was so taken by the “poor man” that she ended sending him $50,000 and maxed her credit.
Stop! My issue with all of this is I do not think that people who were swindled by these 419ers are really victims? In fact, most people who have fallen for these fraudulent gimmicks are just downright GREEDY. I say most because I acknowledge that there are some 419 tricks that do not promise their recipient money rewards.
I called these so called “victims” greedy. Greedy because they are trying to ripe where they did not sow. Greedy because their dolling out the money was motivated by the hope that they will receive millions they did not work for in return. To start with am sure most of you have received silly letters from Nigerian Central Bank telling you that some distant relative of yours left millions of dollars and if you don’t claim it with some money, the Nigerian government will seize it…blah, blah, blah. You do not have to be Einstein in a world that has been taken over by the internet for you to find out at a push of a button that these letters are nothing but hoax/scam/con… the oldest trick in the book.
Take for example the woman on Oprah who claimed that she was duped while trying to “help” a poor guy in Nigeria who sent her a fax that he needed an urgent surgery. She claimed that even though he offered to give her back the money plus some extra she just felt she had to “help” him so she sent him $10,000, then another and another till she spent $50,000 helping the “poor guy”. Even Oprah helped her emphasize on how she was defrauded while helping. Ok wait a minute…I do not intend to judge anyone, but how many of us will spend $50,000 helping a total stranger? These are the same people who can’t even give $1 to a beggar on the street. Spare me it is obvious that she “helped” him simply because of the personal gain she was hoping to realize.
Another interesting story of share greed is the former congressman, father of Chelsea Clinton’s boyfriend. Although they referred to him as a victim, he was no more of a victim than the woman mentioned above. He invested both his money and stolen money to venture into a business that would fetch an unrealistic, ridiculous profit. At the end of the day he lost $3 million to 419ers all because he wanted to be as wealthy as others in his social circle. People, I don’t know what you call that - but where I come from that is greedy/gluttonous/covetous…
As mentioned earlier the law of nature makes it clear that no man can ripe where he does not sow. In the same way, I will continue to say that some of these people who are trying to ripe where they did not sow should not be pitied as “419 victims” but rather be seen as nothing more than insatiable people.
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