Whether it’s an e-mail from Nigerian royalty offering cash or a business deal advertised in a newspaper that looks too good to be true, 419 scams can lose you money, and even your life.
These scams, also known as advanced-fee fraud, were named after section 419 in the Nigerian Criminal Code that deals with fraudulent money laundering, as they allegedly originated in Nigeria.
The term has been back on the lips of hundreds of South Africans this week after a 419 scam resulted in the kidnapping of Dutch national Edo de Ronde for almost two days.
De Ronde arrived in South Africa to wrap up a R42 million scrap metal business deal with a Nigerian-run South African company which was believed to be legitimate.
De Ronde was sent to meet a local contact, but ended up being robbed and strip-searched by police impersonators and held at gunpoint for two days at a guest house in Olivedale.
While being held, he was forced to lie to his company until they paid an advanced deposit of $50 000 (R343 000) for the scrap metal.
He was released after he managed to send an SMS to his wife in Holland requesting help. Six of his kidnappers were arrested on Saturday.
While De Ronde was lucky that the situation did not turn violent, several other 419-related cases have resulted in torture and even death.
A Brazilian businessman was captured and kept at a home in Kensington for days, with his kidnappers burning him all over his body with a clothes-iron.
He was told that he would get only one last call to his wife and then he would be killed if he and his company could not come up with an exorbitant amount of money.
Police managed to rescue the man after another victim, who had paid for his release, informed police of the location of the house.
But not all 419 scams involve world-travelling and kidnapping; some are just credit-card fraud.
Text messages have been making the rounds in South Africa that claim that phone owners have won the British lottery or a Big Brother Africa competition. The texts, which come from an unusable number, ask phone owners to contact a Mr Mike Williams on 073 162 7777 to claim their prize.
When The Star contacted Williams for the R150 000 prize, he asked for an ID number and bank account details. A small fee would be required before the prize money could be sent. When the Star asked for further information on Williams’s company, he was unwilling to talk and when asked if he was a South African resident, he promptly hung up.
Similar e-mail scams call on recipients to provide transfer fees to gain access to millions of dollars from a Nigerian royal’s inheritance.
Once the transfer is done, the scamsters disappear.
Police advise recipients of spam e-mails and SMSes that offer money for nothing to ignore them as most prove to simply be attempts to extort money from gullible victims.
According to Hawks spokesman McIntosh Polela: “If a deal looks too good to be true, it probably is.” - The Star