Maybe it's because I really like writing, but one of my favourite things to do is actually read the scam e-mails that I get, and analyze them to see how their creators operate and create their hooks. For some reason, the ones I find most amusing always come from Nigeria. I've received stuff from other African countries before, but the ones using Nigeria as their point of origin really get to my funny bone. I think I read from the book The Confidence Game by Maria Konnikova that e-mail scammers like to be purposefully imperfect with their e-mails in order to weed out the people that would be too smart to sniff out their tricks, so I was prepare for some shenanigans.
This one that I received recently was a variant I've never seen before. I've seen scammers take the threatening-you-with-your-private-information route, the "I'm FBI" gimmick, or "The gods have spoken to me" angle, but this one assumes that you've already been scammed. It's an unusual one for me to see, but clearly these guys are aiming for that follow-up hit. They took on the role of a "legal chairman of the ICPC" named Nta Ekpo,
turns out to be a real person.
As per standard, the grammar and formatting of the entire e-mail was atrocious, with spaces in between words being incredibly inconsistent and capital letters and quotation marks strewn about randomly all throughout. The facts in the e-mail were actually correct, however. It started with a brief history of the International Corrupt Practices Commision (ICPC) and why it was made by the Nigerian president in 2000, Chief Olesegun Obanjo. I looked up the ICPC and the name of the Nigerian president, and they matched up reasonably well with the content in the message.
The e-mail explained how the ICPC was started to combat corruption internally and internationally to protect diplomatic relations and maintain peace throughout the world. It also went on to say that they were funded by the FBI, so I suppose this particular e-mail marked off two items on the stereotypical scam checklist.
The message goes on to say that the recipient is next on the list of priority cases, and details some instructions on how to go about getting lost money back. The instructions include providing in an e-mail reply the recipient's address and phone number, and copies of the recipient's drivers license and passport. An observant person would notice that bodies of authority usually do not need copies of official documents.
The e-mail ends off with the chairman signing off and providing his phone number and some reassurance that the money would be transferred within days of the recipient's response. Naturally, after reading through everything, I did more research. I checked out the address they provided in the e-mail and found that it coincided with the real ICPC headquarters.
But, unfortunately Google listed the location as permanently closed. A street-view look gave me a potential hint as to why. The date on the image was from 2018, so I trust that it was more or less accurate.
During my checks and searches, I came across a Facebook page with the scam pasted onto a post, word for word. It was exactly the same message, down to the random capitalization and lack of spacing. I was surprised to find out that the scam had been circulating for some time now. The Facebook post was dated December 2016, so it had been floating around for at least two years.
You can probably find the Facebook page yourself and find the text in full. For reference though, I've taken the liberty of taking screenshots of the e-mail and leaving it on this post. Perhaps you can find it as amusing as I did, or maybe become aware of the existence of this particular scam so that you can recognize it for the fraudulence that it is.
Anyway, that's it for this random tidbit. Thanks for reading!