Ever got an email from Nigerian princes wanting you to be their business partner? or the Nigerian Princes wanting to marry you and make you a millionaire just out of your inbox?
Well, mostly these emails go straight into the spam folder, thanks to the intelligent filtering of Gmail (and other email serves).
But have you ever wondered how much successful these scammers can be in ripping people off? Well, this is exactly what we will find out in this post.
Back in 2014, I did a post about Nigerian Scammers scamming over $817 Millions just from India. and the figure for US is even more jaw dropping. about $2.3 Billion, that a big B. The figures were just for 2013. You can check out the detailed post
I was looking for the data for 2014 and 2015 from the same source but couldn’t find. So I am using other source which reports less loss but it works on number of cases reported.
Here is a data from a website called Scam Watch, which educated people about different types of scams, they have got some data for Nigerian scams as well.
- In 2014, the reported cases were around 1053 and the total money lost, was, $2 193 094- see detailed charts
- In 2015, the reported cases were around 980 and the total money lost, was, $4 549 807 – see detailed charts
Note: These are the number only from the cases reported on the website, the actualy number is much higher as cases reported to the police are much more.
The page on the website also explains about the scams, some warning signs and how you can avoid the. I think it’s pretty useful for every one. You should know about it and tell all your friends too, so that they don’t lose money.
Warning Signs
- You receive a contact out of the blue asking you to ‘help’ someone from another country transfer money out of their country (e.g. Nigeria, Sierra Leone or Iraq).
- The request includes a long and often sad story about why the money cannot be transferred by the rightful owner.
- You are offered a financial reward for helping them access their ‘trapped’ funds. The amount of money to be transferred, and the payment that the scammer promises to you if you help, is usually very large.
- The writing in the message is in very polite but broken English.
- The scammer will often ask you to send money via a money transfer service.
Protect yourself
- Never send money or give credit card details, online account details or copies of personal documents to anyone you don’t know or trust and never by email.
- Avoid any arrangement with a stranger that asks for up-front payment via money order, wire transfer, international funds transfer, pre-loaded card or electronic currency. It is rare to recover money sent this way.
- Do not agree to transfer money for someone else. Money laundering is a criminal offence.
