Supported by
Who Made That Nigerian Scam?
The Nigerian scam may seem like a scourge of the Internet age, but it actually predates email. Before we started getting all-caps proposals in our inboxes, con men in West Africa plied their trade by fax and paper letter. Some of the first scams to make their way to Western Europe arrived by telex in 1989 and 1990, when businessmen in Britain started hearing that a wayward tanker of Nigerian crude could have its cargo claimed for bargain prices — in exchange, of course, for some cash upfront. Before then, Nigerian fraudsters aimed their grifts at locals. One scheme was the “wash-wash,” a literal money-laundering in which the mark is shown a valise of supposed bills blackened with Vaseline and iodine and promised a cut if he pays for an expensive cleaning agent.
Advance-fee or 419 scams, known by the section of the Nigerian criminal code that outlaws fraud, took on a global character when oil prices crashed along with the national economy. A newly installed military ruler, Ibrahim Babangida, cut salaries for civil servants and the military and ended price supports for the local currency. Within three years, the country’s inflation rate was greater than 38 percent. The English-speaking, entrepreneurial class found itself with little buying power and in need of foreign money. “Some of these guys came out and started perpetrating fraud,” says Andrew Apter, an Africa historian at U.C.L.A. “They used the language and insignias and letterhead of financial offices to lure people in.”
Apter has traced this sort of misuse of official iconography as far back as a century. When Nigeria was established as a colony under British rule in 1914, its first governor cracked down on scammers in fake uniforms who claimed to be collecting taxes on behalf of the empire. The advance-fee scam itself — whereby payments are extracted from a sucker who hopes to gain an enormous treasure — seems to have originated elsewhere. According to Robert Whitaker, a historian at the University of Texas, an earlier version of the con, known as the Spanish Swindle or the Spanish Prisoner trick, plagued Britain throughout the 19th century.
These days, an address in Lagos would seem to be a red flag for prospective dupes, but it may be helpful for some scammers. In 2012, a researcher with Microsoft named Cormac Herley tried to model the con artist’s behavior and concluded that a clear tip-off — an email address in Nigeria, for example — could, by scaring off the savvier or more suspicious sorts, enable them to focus on the most gullible victims.
SCAMMING THE SCAMMERS
In 2003, Mike Berry was a 41-year-old computer engineer in Manchester, England, when he started replying to Nigerian scammers over email for fun. His website, 419eater.com, provides a forum for likeminded “scam-baiters” and an archive of their most outrageous achievements.
Subscribe to The Times to read as many articles as you like.
Explore The New York Times Magazine
A Controversial Fence in Maine: The goal was to shield a house from the road, but it soon turned into something much more revealing.
Robert Putnam Knows Loneliness: The author of “Bowling Alone” warned us about social isolation and its effect on democracy a quarter century ago. Things have only gotten worse.
The Diddy She Remembers: Looking back on her life as a woman in the music industry, Danyel Smith is unsettled by the sexism perpetrated by Sean Combs and others.
A Wrongful Conviction: Flawed science helped convict a man more than 20 years ago, but the Nashville D.A.’s office now says it got it wrong. Why is he still behind bars?
An Inescapable Kidnapping: Fifty years ago, he was taken at gunpoint. Then he went on with his life — and that’s the part that haunts Taffy Brodesser-Akner.
Related Content
Jens Mortensen for The New York Times
Jens Mortensen for The New York Times
Jens Mortensen for The New York Times
Artwork by David Samuel Stern
Linda Xiao for The New York Times. Food stylist: Maggie Ruggiero. Prop stylist: Sophia Eleni Pappas.
Illustration by Tomi Um
Fumi Nagasaka for The New York Times
Illustration by Tomi Um
Jamie Chung for The New York Times. Source photograph: Kaye Maze.
Editors’ Picks
Nicholas Sansone for The New York Times
Getty Images
Trending in The Times
Jeff Amy/Associated Press
Damon Winter/The New York Times
Image by Andrew Testa for The New York Times
Doug Mills/The New York Times
Thalassa Raasch for The New York Times
National Fish and Wildlife Foundation
Angela Weiss/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Landon Nordeman for The New York Times
Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images
Advertisement