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If an e-mail calls you a trustworthy individual, into whose account the sender intends to transfer some funds, you?d read on, wouldn?t you.
If an e-mail calls you a trustworthy individual, into whose account the sender intends to transfer some funds, you?d read on, wouldn?t you? Well we did at Prof Sec on receiving the e-mail from Lagos, Nigeria. It reckons the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation has $10m thanks to ?over-invoicing of some supplies and engineering works contracts?, which can only be paid into a foreign account. If you help, you get 20 per cent. $2m?! We?re in the money!? Well, alas no. Welcome to the world of what the the National Criminal Intelligence Service calls 419 fraud – e-mailers who offer riches then string along anyone who replies, asking first for your business details, then fees. The NCIS warn you not to reply even for a laugh – the fraudsters may use your e-mail address or business letterhead to forward their fraud. You have to hand it to the fraudsters for their appeal to base human greed. ?Please, treat this transaction as strictly confidential, we are civil servants who would not want our names tarnished,? the e-mail reads. OK, whatever you say, Dr Momoh. When mentioning this fraud last September we gave contact details for you to send examples of such frauds to the NCIS. However a reader rang us to say he was made to feel unwelcome when he actually tried pass on such an e-mail, so maybe this time we won?t waste your time or the police?s by actually trying to detect these fraudsters.
Late arrivals to the April 11 JSIC gathering at Canary Wharf in London following a sign from a shopping mall through a door may have been surprised to find the reception area, visible from the public space, unmanned. There for the taking were not only name badges but delegates? coats (and one hat) on a rail. Once upstairs, Prof Sec mentioned to the JSIC organisers this invitation to the light-fingered of east London, and when Prof Sec next looked the rail was indeed out of sight – hopefully in a securer room, and not wheeled away by an opportunist thief.
