"I Will Eat ALL Your Dollars"

The cyber scammers in Africa, and now the Middle East who trawl for victims on the Internet, consider Americans as easy targets. But one scammer had second thoughts.

FESTAC, Nigeria — As patient as fishermen, the young men toil day and night, trawling for replies to the e-mails they shoot to strangers half a world away.Most recipients hit delete, delete, delete, delete without ever opening the messages that urge them to claim the untold riches of a long-lost deceased second cousin, and the messages that offer millions of dollars to help smuggle loot stolen by a corrupt Nigerian official into a U.S. account.

But the few who actually reply make this a tempting and lucrative business for the boys of Festac, a neighborhood of Lagos at the center of the cyber-scam universe. The targets are called maghas — scammer slang from a Yoruba word meaning fool, and refers to gullible white people.Samuel is 19, handsome, bright, well-dressed and ambitious. He has a special flair for computers. Until he quit the game last year, he was one of Festac's best-known cyber-scam champions.

Like nearly everyone here, he is desperate to escape the run-down, teeming streets, the grimy buildings, the broken refrigerators stacked outside, the strings of wet washing. It's the kind of place where plainclothes police prowl the streets extorting bribes, where mobs burn thieves to death for stealing a cellphone, and where some people paint, "This House Is Not For Sale" in big letters on their homes, in case someone posing as the owner tries to put it on the market.

It is where places like the Net Express cyber cafe thrive.

The atmosphere of silent concentration inside the cafe is absolute, strangely reminiscent of a university library before exams. Except, that is, for the odd guffaw or cheer. The doors are locked from 10:30 p.m. until 7 a.m., so the cyber thieves can work in peace without fear of armed intruders.

In this sanctum, Samuel says, he extracted thousands of American e-mail addresses, sent off thousands of fraudulent letters, and waited for replies. He thinks disclosure of his surname could endanger his safety.

The e-mail scammers here prefer hitting Americans, whom they see as rich and easy to fool. They rationalize the crime by telling themselves there are no real victims: Maghas are avaricious and complicit.

To them, the scams, called 419 after the Nigerian statute against fraud, are a game.

Their anthem, "I Go Chop Your Dollars," hugely popular in Lagos, hit the airwaves a few months ago as a CD penned by an artist called Osofia:

"419 is just a game, you are the losers, we are the winners." They also
said, "White people are greedy, I can say they are greedy -- White man, I
will eat ALL your dollars, will take your money and disappear." Followed
by, " 419 is just a game, we are the masters, you are the losers."

"Nobody feels sorry for the victims," Samuel said.Scammers, he said, "have the belief that white men are stupid and greedy. They say the American guy has a good life. There's this belief that for every dollar they lose, the American government will pay them back in some way."

What makes the scams so tempting for the targets is that they promise a tantalizing escape from the mundane disappointments of life. The scams offer fabulous riches or the love of your life, but first the magha has to send a series of escalating fees and payments. In a dating scam, for instance, the fraudsters send pictures taken from modeling websites.

"Is the girl in these pictures really you?? I just can't get over your beauty!!!! I can't believe my luck!!!!!!!" One hapless American wrote recently to a scammer seeking $1,200.

The scammer replied, "Would you send the money this week so I may buy a ticket?"

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In my experience, having investigated only six of these types of cases, over the past seventeen years, but being familiar with many more, Americans who have attended government schools are the best victims. Those with more liberal backgrounds, who inherited their money are at the top of the list of potential victims. That is not to say that these scammers are looking for specifics, but that the shotgun approach they use, sending millions of e-mails, trolling for those people DOES pay off -- otherwise, they would starve to death. They are very successful, thanks to American liberal thought processes. That's a shame. Our government CANNOT protect you from these criminals.

Here we are in 2005, and anyone dumb enough to fall for one of these scams, generally deserves to be defrauded of their funds. I have literally four hundred of these things, stored in my e-mail archives, that I’ve accumulated over the past couple of years. The range widely in the approach, but the idea is that you could get vastly increased wealth, if you’ll just show a little interest in the sender, and his plight.

Essentially, they are offering something for nothing, then using a little bait and switch, and asking for a small investment, just to show your trustworthyness as a co-conspirator, before the transfer the MILLIONS into your account(s). Sure! Morons abound, . . . the Nigerian Scammers, (who have now branched out to many other countries, and include many terrorist organizations), are counting on your government education to carry them through. Wake up, America!! Fix our educational system.

God Bless,
Dan’L