Pssst – Wanna Get Rich?

The e-mails arrive with seductive subject lines that immediately capture your attention. The proposal is unsolicited but intriguing, with a great emphasis on the opportunity to pocket a large sum of money by capitalizing on shoddy paperwork of a West African country, usually Nigeria.

Usually, the offer involves “over-invoiced” or “double-invoiced” crude oil or other commodities and service contracts. Or the overture could involve money laundering, where your potential partner has a lot of money that needs to be moved beyond the prying eyes of government revenue collectors.

Of course, there’s a catch, although it has several aliases, depending on the deal. Sometimes, it’s called “advance fee.” In other pitches, it’s referred to as a “transfer tax” or a “performance bond.” Whatever the name, the end result is the same: you have to pay money up front to collect on untold riches, usually 5% to 10% on $25 million to $50 million US.

The RCMP also have a name for these tantalizing proposals. They call it fraud. After using age-old means such as mail, scam artists have migrated to cyberspace with the same enthusiasm as legitimate businesses, largely for the same reasons. Instead of buying stamps or running up long-distance charges to fax their scams, today’s charlatans have moved to e-mail, using anonymous accounts with big service providers, such as Hotmail or Yahoo, to try to hoodwink businesses out of billions of dollars annually.

“Things are so open and the Internet is not regulated. It is so difficult to track anything down. It is very anonymous. How do you identify who’s who? A basic premise of charging anybody with a crime is being able to identify an accused person,” says Cpl. John Lovie of the RCMP’s K Division commercial crime section in Edmonton. “There are lots of people out there looking to separate you from your money and a lot of them have moved onto the Internet.”

Read the rest of this story in this month’s issue of Alberta Venture . Click here to subscribe.

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