A Letter From Africa

I had a very interesting and animated conversation with my girlfriend recently, over an issue that concerns all of us, but invites different responses from different people. It was all based around this mail I received through the pbase message system, from someone purporting to come from the Ivory Coast-


kudi_sulemancc@yahoo.com

I am Kudi,writing from Ivory Coast,I was moved by your profile and i decided to contact you for assistance as your profiled as proofed who you are and your capabilities too.

There is this ($12,500,000.00 United States Dollars) which my late father kept in Utility Delivery And Sleaning Company in Ivory Coast as containing family valuables before he was assassinated by unknown persons from the rebels after the new political crisis in my country in 2001.

Right now,i am not able to clear this box from the company because of my tender age and can not secure this money here because of the political crisis in this country,now i wish to relocate to your country where the box of money will be shipped to and we meet after the box has been transfered to your country for investment.

I want you to help me claim and retrive the box from the security company with the documents I have here with me and transfer it into your country for my future life purposes and on profitable investment.

According to the Security Company on my last discussion with the manager Mr Clark Richard,they are some little taxes which must be cleared up before the release of the box also,and this is the reason I cried unto you for Godly help to get this money out of the Company.

I will be attaching the Certificate of deposit,my photo and Course of signing the documents with the security company as soon as you indicate your interest in this transaction.

I will be waiting patienly for your email and hope to get maximum coperation from you.
Goodbye,
Miss Kudi Suleman.

Of course, this is none other than the infamous '419' scam, which claimed to be about a Nigerian, in another guise, which the unwary might think is the real thing. Note not only the spelling mistakes, but their careful positioning in the letter and the appeals to your charitable nature. What all these scams do is try to gain your trust and appeal to your natural greed, all in one. They say that there is some money, usually an improbably vast sum, that cannot be released for legal reasons. As they goad you along, they come to the point where they ask you to make a 'small paymeny'- which can actually run into tens of thousands of dollars, in some cases, to pay off the neccessary txes so thast the 'safety deposit box' or whatever can be opened, and the funds recieved. What's in it for you? Nothing! But they will try and convince you that you will end up a millionaire. On top of this, they do so by disguising themselves as a semi-literate but deeply religious African who simply couldn't be lying!

I suppose I could have played games with the guy, as this smartie-pants did, but I learned in the past that my intelligence is not in the realm on concocting and unravelling deceit and also, who knows what the guy would do with any email address or other details that he got hold of. Even giving my bank account number could be enough for him to somehow fake my signature and withdraw from it (my credit card was faked and a large purchase made last year, which thankfully was covered by the insurance). You just never know.

Now this kind of deceit is a world-wide problem, which deceit in itself may always have been. Whilst there is something amusing about it when unmasked, it can also be quite a serious one- people can lose their entire life-savings to such fraudsters with their 'pishing scams', which seem to be increasing in their sophistication as time goes on. Fraud does seem to be a part of the world we live in- some would say it is even practiced by governments, who claim one thing and do another. WMDs in Iraq, anyone? Some lucrative contracts for Halliburton, perhaps?

It seems to be an especially big problem in Japan, despite generally being a very honest country- leading some to conclude that the entire financial world here is riddled with corruption and that if such crime continues, the nation may be on the verge of bankrupcy (well, for reasons other than the fraud, perhaps, but the corrupters certainly aren't helping!). It recently lead to charges being leveled at Houri Mon, a kind of idol for young Japanese investors, who were dazzled by his seeming ability to perform financial miracles in a market controlled by the 'big old boys', only to see the whole thing take a sudden dip when charges of fraud were levelled at him. Despite her high level of intelligence and financial knowledge, even my own girlfriend was duped by the situation. What is it about deceit, and why do we fall for it?