Tag: 419

A 48-year-old Illinois man recently learned, the hard way, that '419' scams involve more than just distressed bankers, contrite hitmen and forlorn princes. The unnamed victim reportedly discovered the agonizing truth when his online love interest -- of more than two years -- turned out to be a complete fabrication. The heart- (and bank account-) breaking scam cost the man more than $200,000, ...

digg_url ='http://www.switched.com/2010/02/05/nigerian-stars-fight-419-scams-with-pop-music/'; 30 years ago, Nigerian Afrobeat legend and Pan-African activist Fela Kuti released the song 'Zombie,' a scathing attack on Nigeria's dictatorial and militaristic regime. The hottest new single (video after the break) to come out of Nigeria today, though, takes aim at a slightly less ambitious social ...

As always, scam artists are just waiting to take advantage of the latest scare and tragedy. Swine flu, the economic crisis, rising gas prices, the 2008 Sichuan earthquake, and most recently, the Haitian earthquake, have all been exploited by con men for financial gain. So no one should be surprised that 419 scammers are twisting fear and anger over the failed bombing of Northwest Airlines flight ...

The disturbing evolution of the 419 scam from e-mails from Nigerian princes to hijacked Facebook accounts is raising serious alarms within law enforcement circles. We originally reported this new tactic in January, but users still haven't caught on. Just last month a Missouri woman was taken for $4,000 by a scammer posing as a friend on Facebook, and the 'Today Show' recently aired a segment about ...

Of all the scams out there on the Internets, the Nigerian (or 419) scam is far and away the most well-known. Individuals have fallen for it and lost their entire savings, banks have fallen for it and lost millions, and even a British politician was sucked in. We're happy to help inform people about this scam so that they can avoid it, but it seems some Americans are paying attention for the ...

Last week, a woman in Edmonton, Alberta publicly told of a recent dating Web site scam that has cost her "a lot" of money, FOX News reports. Apparently, the woman -- who has elected to remain anonymous -- is only one of several victims in the area; local detective Mark Johnson told the Edmonton Sun that other women have been scammed, as well, resulting in a total loss approaching $300,000 ...

If something seems too good to be true, it probably is. We apologize if that comes across as cynical -- we just want you to think twice next time someone calls and offers you gobs of money for no apparent reason. Take the sad case of John Rempel of Leamington, England. The man literally gave away his entire savings (along with most of his family's) to a person claiming that Rempel had ...

As if you didn't feel bad enough about yourself after being taken in by that e-mail from the Nigerian prince enlisting your help to gain access to nonexistent millions, now you've got to worry about guarding yourself against a scam targeted at those who have already fallen victim to Internet con-men. Those infinitely malleable 419 scams that harvest personal info from the less cautious among ...

We know that overzealous partisan hacks on both sides of the aisle will buy into any crazy accusation tossed at their political opponents, but this is the first time we've ever heard of a group getting so desperate that they were taken in by a so called 419 scam (like those Nigerian princes that keep e-mailing you about their inaccessible fortune). In the last, floundering days of the ...

The trust people have in social networking sites could inadvertently lead them to fall for phishing scams, according to an online security expert who tracks so-called "419 scams," so named for the Nigerian penal code intended to prevent the scams. The business social network site LinkedIn has an unusually high degree of trust among its users, who are almost all adults using the site to increase ...

We're sure you've seen them in your e-mail inbox before, those messages from someone in Africa offering you millions of dollars in questionably legal funds in exchange for your assistance and -- naturally -- a few thousand dollars of your own funds. They call them 419 scams, for the article in the Nigerian criminal code that covers this particular brand of fraud. There is very little that one ...