The Anatomy of Scams and How to Stay Safe — Advance Fee Scam
With many variations, people — poor and rich, smart, and successful — still fall for it!
By now all of us have heard about the decade-old Nigerian prince scam. Many of us unfortunately still receive emails from fraudsters claiming to make you rich for free. But if you thought it is too old a trick to fall for, think again. People — poor and rich, smart, and successful — still fall for it!
Look at the scale of just one of these scams: Nigerian prince scams still rake in over $700,000 a year (cnbc.com)
Incidentally, the trigger for this article is that someone randomly contacted me on WhatsApp and wants to strike a friendship. Smell something? I wanted to document the inner working of the scam and present it to the readers, but before that; we go over some basic and useful info in this article.
These types of scams are known as an “Advance-fee Scam”
“An advance-fee scam is a form of fraud and one of the most common types of confidence tricks. The scam typically involves promising the victim a significant share of a large sum of money, in return for a small up-front payment, which the fraudster claims will be used to obtain the large sum. If a victim makes the payment, the fraudster…
