Contributed by: Editor on Saturday, August 15 2009 @ 10:30 am
Last modified on
I had a laugh when I saw an article about how the global economy downturn has made it harder for Nigeria's scammers to find unsuspecting people to steal money from. This doesn't mean that there are less scammers out there, in fact there are more and they are trying even harder.
U.S. authorities say Americans -- the easiest prey, according to Nigerian scammers -- lose hundreds of millions of dollars a year to cybercrimes, including a scheme known as the Nigerian 419 fraud, named for a section of the Nigerian criminal code.
The Washington Post interviewed 4 self proclaimed scammers or yahoo-yahoo boys as they call themselves in Nigeria. The ones who do well at their trade can earn up to $60,000 in a good month though, business lately is down over 40 percent. Most scammers are young men who started in college and who then learned the skills of their “trade” from each other.
Swindles to watch out for through emails:
Remember as in “real life”, you always need to be carefully of who you deal with online when comes to your personal information and money. For the full story, visit the Washington Post[*1] .