I have had an opportunity to explore many of the scams out of Africa and a few other nations as well. It is not my intention to lead people to believe that Africa is the only country they originate from, because it is not. Has anyone out there developed a red flag system to identify this practice to safeguard the innocent?
2007-01-18 08:00:40 · 6 answers · asked by Anonymous in News & Events ➔ Current Events
The three countries in Africa from where the majority of scams originate are Nigeria, Zimbabwe and Cote D'Ivoire (Ivory Coast).
Zimbabweans and Ivorians often pose as Ghanaians and in recent times Nigerians have started to do likewise. Unfortunatley this has given Ghana a bad image. In reality Ghana is an extremely honest country where traditions, integrity and family values are held in the highest regard. Almost all scams operating, or appearing to operate from Ghana, are the work of non Ghanaians.
Zimbabwe is the 131st most corrupt country in the world, Nigeria is 142nd and Code D'Ivoire 151st - out of a total of 163 countries in the world. Finland, Iceland and New Zealand are least corrupt (source: http://www.transparency.org/news_room/in_focus/2006/cpi_2006__1/cpi_table)
Besides the countries already mentioned Liberia, Kenya, Niger, Central African Republic and Chad are some of the other African nations where scams often originate, or appear to originate from.
As you know, one of the problems with the internet is that it's very easy to appear to be somewhere you're not. A lot of scammers operating out of Europe (London in particular) and the Far East (Japan in particular) appear to be African in origin.
I have my own domain names and every time I give out an e-mail address I use a unique one - the one I have with Yahoo Answers is yahooanswers@___.com, with microsoft it's microsoft@___.com. If I start getting spam e-mail I know exactly where it's originated from and anything I receive that isn't from a recognised source is immediately deleted.
2007-01-21 05:49:57 · answer #1 · answered by Trevor 7 · 0⤊ 0⤋
I know there are a ton of online scams from Nigeria which always struck me as odd. The big one is one eBay. The scammer will buy up lots of high priced items like iPods or laptops within a few minutes and ask the sellers if they can send it a family member in Nigeria because they (the scammer) is an American businessman/woman doing buisness oversea and whatever item they bought is a gift. They end up buying the item with a stolen Federal Express account so the seller thinks they have the money and go ahead and send the items. A day later, the money is gone and so is the sellers item. eBay has a whole system (using that word loosely!) about that scam. eBay could really care less so most sellers talk about it with others so I don't think the scam gets as far as it used to.
2007-01-18 16:29:36 · answer #2 · answered by Anonymous · 1⤊ 0⤋
I don't have a system to red flag the scams but there are a LOT of them. It reminds me of an 80's scam...a black guy would come up to you on the street and tell you how he was from South Africa (how he got out during Apartheid was always a mystery to me) and ask if you would help him learn to use the "white man's bank machine". He'd give you money, check whatever, and could you please deposit in your account? or hold it for him? It was some sort of bait and switch/bad check scam. Plenty of people got taken by it... I was always like...I DON'T SO!
All that to say, nothing new under the sun.
2007-01-18 16:09:14 · answer #3 · answered by fdm215 7 · 3⤊ 0⤋
Scamsbeware.com - Discussion Board
2007-01-19 03:08:15 · answer #4 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 0⤋
Source is a good read on the subject.
2007-01-18 16:10:37 · answer #5 · answered by 2Negative 6 · 1⤊ 0⤋
If it`s too good to be true, it isn`t true. Simple as that. Also, solicitors are looking for "revenue".
2007-01-18 16:08:42 · answer #6 · answered by Anonymous · 2⤊ 0⤋