419 scams are typically initiated by sending email to a list of potential victims. The scammer hopes that one recipient -- the so-called mugu -- will be so greedy that he'll overlook the obvious illegality of the deal proposed. You've probably seen these come-ons in your inbox. For example:
DEAR FRIEND
I am MR MOHAMMED NASSER, the director in charge of auditing and accounting section of Standard trust bank of Benin cotonou Rep ublic of Benin in West Africa with due respect and regard. I have decided t o contact you on a business transaction that will be very beneficial to bot h of us at the end of the transaction .
During our investigation and auditing in this bank,my department came across a very huge sum of mon ey belonging to a deceased person who died in (beirut-bound charter jet) pl ane crash on the 25th December 2003 here in cotonou (replublic of benin) an d since his untimely death the funds has been dormant in his account with t his Bank without any claim of the fund in our custody either from his famil y or relation before our discovery to thisdevelopment...
It goes on to suggest that you might be able to help steal the money. In return for your help, you'll get a sizable proportion of the ill-gotten gains. It later transpires that the scammers need you to lend them some money for "expenses," which of course you'll never see again.
One of the ways the scammers find target their victims is by using Google and other search engines. Those of us who own websites and read our webserver logs can often find some hilarious search terms being issued from the Ivory Coast, Nigeria, Senegal, the Gambia, Uganda, and even Greece. My favorite recent examples are:
- 2006 fine me email contact directors companies in uk
- contact smash email addresses 2005 hotmail
- +1 november 2005 email contact @% hotmail.com
- 2005 premier league email directory
- american people in england+2005 contact adress
- i want to buy achieve email contacts pages please give me there email contacts 2005
Tags: 419, spam.