posted
Let me start by saying that I am not a 419 �er nor do I approve of it nor condone 419. But as a professional with Nigerian origins living and working in europe, it is inevitable that you are confronted with the typical 419 letter from nigeria. This is sometimes very irritating especially when your collegues and maybe boss go about it as if we nigerians are the fathers or inventors of this scam and that this behaviour is somhow ingrained in us or inscribed in our DNA so that it has been in our blood so to say. These are not very favourable opinions and the flood of 419 letters does nothing to abate this suposition. Even worse is that the scam in its present and widely known form has "blown" a long time ago. It is well past its heydays when the barons of the Game where doing their stuff. The quality of the perpertrors and hence the quality of the letters have degraded drastically since then. they are mostly pathetic and laughable and one often wonders how anyone with a little iota of common sense could fall for these letters anyway.
Having having been provoked , teased and harrased alot in the past based on my supposed criminal heritage as influenced mainly by these 419 letters I decided to do some research into the origins of this scam to determine wether i had indeed been an offspring of a race of pathological fraudsters and wehter I was dammed to passing that supposed cursed gene to my children. well I found some intresting stuff which lead me to my thesis "that 419 was invented in europe sometime in the midle ages and was perfected by the 17th century. From there it was brought to africa (and america) by criminal europen traders, sailors, and slave traders, where it was practised, (partly even officialy) on the local population. It was inevitable that in time the local population should come to master these tricks and use them on the teacher."
Whenever they try to needle me now with this I take them to some of these links... The oldest reference to 419 in its present for I could find goes back to the 17th century. Hear from Senator the Hon Ian Campbell Parliamentary Secretary to the Treasurer of Australia in 2003;
quote:"Part of the difficulty in shutting down scams is that they invariably crop up again in slightly different forms. For example, today's Nigerian Scam, where a consumer receives a letter or an e-mail from a fictitious Nigerian exile wanting to transfer millions of dollars, is just a variation on the Spanish Prisoner scam which dates back to 1588. The only difference is that the original scam used parchment and the promise of a hidden treasure chest," said Senator Campbell.
A check of yourencyclopedia.net will confirm that date and trace the origin to spain in the following entry
quote: Spanish Prisoner The Spanish Prisoner is a confidence game dating back to at least the 17th century. In its original form, the confidence artist tells his victim (the mark) that he is in correspondence with a wealthy person of high estate who has been imprisoned in Spain under a false identity. The alleged prisoner cannot reveal his identity without serious repercussions, and is relying on the confidence artist to raise money to secure his release. The confidence artist offers to let the mark supply some of the money, with a promise that he will be rewarded generously when the prisoner returns. However, once the mark has turned over his money, he learns that further difficulties have arisen, requiring more money, until the mark is cleaned out and the game ends.
Key features of the Spanish Prisoner are the emphasis on secrecy and the trust the confidence artist is placing in the mark not to reveal the prisoner's identity or situation. The confidence artist will often claim to have chosen the mark carefully based on his reputation for honesty and straight dealing, and may appear to structure the deal so that the confidence artist's ultimate share of the reward will be distributed voluntarily by the mark.
Modern variants of the Spanish Prisoner include the advance fee fraud, in which a valuable item must be ransomed from a warehouse, crooked customs agent, or lost baggage facility before the authorities or thieves recognize its value, and the Nigerian money transfer fraud � another type of advance fee fraud � in which a self-proclaimed relative of a deposed African dictator offers to transfer millions of ill-gotten dollars into the bank account of the mark in return for small initial payments to cover bribes and other expenses.
The film The Spanish Prisoner, written and directed by David Mamet, includes such a confidence trick as part of the plot, as does his other film about con men, House of Games.
From the same source under the rubrik "confidence tricks" we get the following
quote: The Spanish Prisoner scam, which is essentially the same as the Nigerian money transfer fraud. The basic come-on is "we need your help to get some stolen money out of its hiding place". The victim sometimes goes in figuring he or she can cheat the con artists out of their money: anyone trying this has already fallen for the essential con, by believing that the money is there to steal.
so you see we do not have the rather dubious honour of being the inventors or initiators of this plague plague. rather the credit goes to the europeans. and a quick check on the most famous 419`ers surprisingly did not bring up any nigerian int he top 50. Who are the kingpins (FADAS) of 419? some examples... The ultimate Baba was undisputably Count Viktor Lustig a German. He sold the eifel tower in Paris several times, and was also an early propergator of money doubling(he had a money doubling maschine) and "wash-wash". Other greats include charles Ponzi the inventor of the pyramid scheme, Henri Lemoine, French diamond faker, # Gregor MacGregor, Scottish conman who tried to attract investment and settlers for a non-existent country of Poyais , Louis Enricht, US chemist who claimed to have made a substitute for gasoline, Susanna Mildred Hill, US woman who fooled potential suitors, George Parker, who sold New York monuments, Billie Sol Estes, who was paid to produce millions in quotas of cotton, which never existed. LBJ was implicated by Estes in taking payoffs to ignore the scam, which took place in Texas, Tino De Angelis, who sold rights to $175 million in soybean oil stored in tanks, which was actually a thin layer of oil floating on water, Bernie Cornfeld ran what is to date the greatest scam in history, taking in just under $2.5 billion (yes, billion) in what was later realized to be a Ponzi scheme, Frank Abagnale and a host of others.
more recently you have scamers like the Bre-X mineral scammers
I was even surprised to find a 419 letter dated 1914 which could very well be from a present day Nigerian ,albeit it is not it is from a european in world war 1 and can be found at The Serge Solovieff mystery --a WWI variant of the Spanish Prisoner scam The letter dated April 3rd 1914 read sa follows:
quote:Dear Sir,
Although I know you only from good references of your honesty, my sad situation compels me to reveal to you an important affair in which you can procure a modest fortune, saving at the same time that of my darling daughter.
Before being imprisoned here, I was established as a Banker in Russia as you will see by the enclosed article about me of many English newspapers which have published my arrest in London. I beseech you to help me to obtain a sum of 480.000 dollars I have in America and to come here to raise the seizure of my baggage, paying to the Registrar of the Court the expenses of my trial, and recover my portmanteau containing a secret pocket where I have hidden the document indispensable to recover the said sum. As a reward, I will give up to you the third part, viz. 160.000 dollars. I cannot receive your answer in the prison, but you must send a cablegram to a person of my confidence who will deliver it to me.
Awaiting your cable, to instruct you in all my secret. I am Sir,
Yours truly,
S. Solovieff
First of all answer by cable, not by letter, as follows:
So based on all this, when they come to disturb me that nigeria = 419, I always tell them , you started it, you tought them. seems like they where goood students...
___________________ Biafra is inevitable.Illegitimis nil carborundum. Posts: 762 | From: europe | Registered: Jan 2005
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