Fraud online

Request for urgent assistance

No scam is more emblematic of online fraud than the so-called Nigerian mail frauds. There can hardly be a person with an email account who has not received one of these messages or its many variants. A form of what is known as an ‘advance fee’ fraud, the unsolicited message typically asks the recipient to help the sender to arrange for a large amount of currency to be illegally moved out of the country. For this, they need the recipient's bank account details and in return will pay a hefty commission. Once the recipient indicates interest in the proposal, they find that payment of upfront funds is required, ostensibly to deal with bribes or red tape, before the money can be released. Of course, the promised commission never eventuates and the victim's money is lost. In some cases, persuasion is replaced with intimidation and there are reports of victims being threatened, kidnapped and even killed while seeking to recover their funds.