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My mother's husband is a retired police officer who spent ~20 years working business-related crime, and he once told me that the "Nigerian Prince" scam even pre

by krylon 9y ago

My mother's husband is a retired police officer who spent ~20 years working business-related crime, and he once told me that the "Nigerian Prince" scam even predates the Internet, it started out on Fax. Some things, apparently, do not change. Or at least not very quickly. It is kind of sad that there are people who are so gullible, but I wonder how one can live with oneself exploiting this gullibility.

ilamont 9y ago
I used to work for a trading company in Taiwan from 1993-94. We would get letters in the regular postal mail from African countries with similar pitches.
nathanvanfleet 9y ago
There is a really great documentary following an older man who constantly falls for 419 scams. Ultimately he is elderly but I think also suffered some brain damage. But just somehow not enough to lose his power of attorney. Frankly there are those people out there. It was a sad story.
- macintux 9y ago
  It doesn't take brain damage. Everyone is very good at filtering information to match what they already believe. And once it becomes known you believe something, good grief you'll never back down.
e40 9y ago
but I wonder how one can live with oneself exploiting this gullibility. I think it takes a sociopath to pull off this scam as a profession.
- pavlov 9y ago
  I suspect many of the young African men working these scams genuinely believe that the targeted Westerners have so much money that the scams won't seriously impact them. The wealth gap is enormous.
cmurf 9y ago
That person is safe from physical retribution, that's why. Fear of injury or death is the number one instinct involved as an inhibitor to deception and theft of someone else's resources. Fear of being personally branded untrustworthy is another inhibitor, that's been set aside in these kinds of fraud. The law provides some safety for thieves, but technology provides the thief with additional safety from both the victim and authorities. The thief's family may have no idea he earns a living stealing; they may be poor and therefore stealing is morally justified. The balance of force, information, has been altered to thieves' advantage. As far as what motivates them: top on the list is poverty, or more specifically wealth inequality; feeding a family is a top priority, poor alternative choices, and stealing with a technology providing anonymity seems easy, and safe, and they don't witness the fallout from their actions. None of the normal social inhibitors apply to these events. And as for the gullible, well a lot has been written in HN about how technology fails the average non-tech person miserably and continuously and it needs to get better. But that's still just a side effect of wealth inequality and preserving that classism.
pavlov 9y ago
Yes, these scams existed already in the 1980s. Letters and faxes were sent from Africa mainly to businessmen and politicians. I guess they must have used national "Who's Who" type registries [1] to collect the targeted people. The most prominent scam case I know is Olavi Mattila [2], a Finnish politician. He was Minister for Foreign Affairs as well as the chairman of one of the largest industrial companies in Finland. In the '90s, Mattila received Nigerian scam letters that convinced him to invest his fortune in the "investment opportunity". Although initially he was the one scammed, he got so deep into trying to make it work that he spent other people's money too. Eventually he was convincted of fraud in 2004. (After the conviction, he apparently became a Jehovah's Witness. Interesting how that goes.) [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Who%27s_Who https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Who%27s_Who [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olavi_J._Mattila https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olavi_J._Mattila
- ptaipale 9y ago
  That case made me quite concerned: our national wealth was actually managed by people who were as gullible as this. OK, he might have tried the old age defense: he was over 75 years old when he fell for the letter scam. And he was actually sidelined from state businesses already in 1981. But still, his arrogance was astonishing.
- JetSpiegel 9y ago
  The Wikipedia link in [2] doesn't contain that tidbit about Nigerian scams, but a Hacker News comment is not a notable reference.
  - pavlov 9y ago
    The Finnish language Wikipedia entry does include the mention of his fraud conviction and a link to a newspaper article from 2004: https://fi.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olavi_J._Mattila https://fi.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olavi_J._Mattila
jsnell 9y ago
It's a lot older than that; like 16th century. It's actually amazing how close the modern variants are to the original Spanish Prisoner scam.
- craftyguy 9y ago
  Got any good examples of these early scams?
  - jsnell 9y ago
    I'm not aware of any good centralized collection of them. But the articles written on the amazing durability of the scam usually include an example or two: https://priceonomics.com/the-email-scam-with-centuries-of-history/ https://priceonomics.com/the-email-scam-with-centuries-of-hi... http://www.historyhouse.co.uk/articles/spanish_prisoner_swindle.html http://www.historyhouse.co.uk/articles/spanish_prisoner_swin... https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/the-9-lives-of-the-spanish-prisoner-the-treasure-dangling-scam-that-wont-die https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/the-9-lives-of-the-spa...
    - craftyguy 9y ago
      Wow, these are very similar to the 'modern' scam emails. Thanks for sharing this, I had no idea how old this scam was.
- Elv13 9y ago
  In the middle chivalry (loose rules of wars, feud and honor) required to spare the enemies that surrendered, but you could take them prisoners for ransoms. It was a totally normal means of financing warfare and profiting from conflicts. Knights were paid using land taxes (not enough) and from loots/randoms (potentially a lot if you were good at it). I guess it was totally usual back then to expect a letter asking for a random for a nobleman to war. If the dude was dead and a the letter a fake, you had no way to know.
  - narrator 9y ago
keithpeter 9y ago
Has father in law thought of writing his memoirs? Notable scams, unusual cases, devil-in-the-detail patient police work? Would find a market I'm sure
aphextron 9y ago
>Some things, apparently, do not change. Or at least not very quickly. This is a feature, not a bug. The scammers are intelligent people well aware of the fact that "Nigerian Prince" scamming is a well known thing. They are counting on this to filter out the people who would waste their time.

by krylon 9y ago

ilamont 9y ago

I used to work for a trading company in Taiwan from 1993-94. We would get letters in the regular postal mail from African countries with similar pitches.

nathanvanfleet 9y ago

There is a really great documentary following an older man who constantly falls for 419 scams. Ultimately he is elderly but I think also suffered some brain damage. But just somehow not enough to lose his power of attorney. Frankly there are those people out there. It was a sad story.

macintux 9y ago
It doesn't take brain damage. Everyone is very good at filtering information to match what they already believe. And once it becomes known you believe something, good grief you'll never back down.

e40 9y ago

but I wonder how one can live with oneself exploiting this gullibility. I think it takes a sociopath to pull off this scam as a profession.

pavlov 9y ago
I suspect many of the young African men working these scams genuinely believe that the targeted Westerners have so much money that the scams won't seriously impact them. The wealth gap is enormous.

cmurf 9y ago

That person is safe from physical retribution, that's why. Fear of injury or death is the number one instinct involved as an inhibitor to deception and theft of someone else's resources. Fear of being personally branded untrustworthy is another inhibitor, that's been set aside in these kinds of fraud. The law provides some safety for thieves, but technology provides the thief with additional safety from both the victim and authorities. The thief's family may have no idea he earns a living stealing; they may be poor and therefore stealing is morally justified. The balance of force, information, has been altered to thieves' advantage. As far as what motivates them: top on the list is poverty, or more specifically wealth inequality; feeding a family is a top priority, poor alternative choices, and stealing with a technology providing anonymity seems easy, and safe, and they don't witness the fallout from their actions. None of the normal social inhibitors apply to these events. And as for the gullible, well a lot has been written in HN about how technology fails the average non-tech person miserably and continuously and it needs to get better. But that's still just a side effect of wealth inequality and preserving that classism.

pavlov 9y ago

Yes, these scams existed already in the 1980s. Letters and faxes were sent from Africa mainly to businessmen and politicians. I guess they must have used national "Who's Who" type registries [1] to collect the targeted people. The most prominent scam case I know is Olavi Mattila [2], a Finnish politician. He was Minister for Foreign Affairs as well as the chairman of one of the largest industrial companies in Finland. In the '90s, Mattila received Nigerian scam letters that convinced him to invest his fortune in the "investment opportunity". Although initially he was the one scammed, he got so deep into trying to make it work that he spent other people's money too. Eventually he was convincted of fraud in 2004. (After the conviction, he apparently became a Jehovah's Witness. Interesting how that goes.) [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Who%27s_Who https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Who%27s_Who [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olavi_J._Mattila https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olavi_J._Mattila

ptaipale 9y ago
That case made me quite concerned: our national wealth was actually managed by people who were as gullible as this. OK, he might have tried the old age defense: he was over 75 years old when he fell for the letter scam. And he was actually sidelined from state businesses already in 1981. But still, his arrogance was astonishing.
JetSpiegel 9y ago
The Wikipedia link in [2] doesn't contain that tidbit about Nigerian scams, but a Hacker News comment is not a notable reference.
- pavlov 9y ago
  The Finnish language Wikipedia entry does include the mention of his fraud conviction and a link to a newspaper article from 2004: https://fi.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olavi_J._Mattila https://fi.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olavi_J._Mattila

jsnell 9y ago

It's a lot older than that; like 16th century. It's actually amazing how close the modern variants are to the original Spanish Prisoner scam.

craftyguy 9y ago
Got any good examples of these early scams?
- jsnell 9y ago
  I'm not aware of any good centralized collection of them. But the articles written on the amazing durability of the scam usually include an example or two: https://priceonomics.com/the-email-scam-with-centuries-of-history/ https://priceonomics.com/the-email-scam-with-centuries-of-hi... http://www.historyhouse.co.uk/articles/spanish_prisoner_swindle.html http://www.historyhouse.co.uk/articles/spanish_prisoner_swin... https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/the-9-lives-of-the-spanish-prisoner-the-treasure-dangling-scam-that-wont-die https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/the-9-lives-of-the-spa...
  - craftyguy 9y ago
    Wow, these are very similar to the 'modern' scam emails. Thanks for sharing this, I had no idea how old this scam was.
Elv13 9y ago
In the middle chivalry (loose rules of wars, feud and honor) required to spare the enemies that surrendered, but you could take them prisoners for ransoms. It was a totally normal means of financing warfare and profiting from conflicts. Knights were paid using land taxes (not enough) and from loots/randoms (potentially a lot if you were good at it). I guess it was totally usual back then to expect a letter asking for a random for a nobleman to war. If the dude was dead and a the letter a fake, you had no way to know.
- narrator 9y ago

keithpeter 9y ago

Has father in law thought of writing his memoirs? Notable scams, unusual cases, devil-in-the-detail patient police work? Would find a market I'm sure

aphextron 9y ago

>Some things, apparently, do not change. Or at least not very quickly. This is a feature, not a bug. The scammers are intelligent people well aware of the fact that "Nigerian Prince" scamming is a well known thing. They are counting on this to filter out the people who would waste their time.