All scams are a variation of the same con

The comic I tore

I was walking down to school when I was a student at the Yaba College of Technology in 1983 when a man approached me asking for directions. Our little engagement was what he needed because there was very little I remembered of our encounter apart from the fact that I never got to school, I made my way back home and the money that was in my wallet had somehow become an old comic book.

I had met with a confidence trickster probably with the ability to mesmerise, I can only say that it was providence that guided my having my money in more than one place or I would have had a 7 kilometre walk ahead of me.

Red mercury trickster

Six years on, I was working at IT Systems, a computer services firm when I was called out to fix a problem at a supposed client’s office. Unbeknownst to me, I walked into a meeting where a man was making a business proposal to clear goods at the airport that comprised of suitcases of presumably unprocessed currency that needed to be cleaned up with red mercury. [BBC News: 'Red mercury': Why does this strange myth persist?]

He needed 40,000 Naira to collect his cargo and obtain enough red mercury to process the currency amounting to about 10,000,000 Naira. He was going to cut me in on the deal, but it felt too good to be true. It was a Friday and there followed two sleepless nights in which I agonised about getting the police involved. In the end, I let it go because it would have been trouble, I did not need. Providence was looking on me.

Printing money instead

This was around the time that a classmate of mine who ran a printing press decided the better option was to cut to the chase and print money instead. We all found out when they were paraded on television, I do wonder what happened to him after that.

Many years after that, I met with another old classmate, wily and cunning, he was from when we first met, we were supposed to be friends, but he was trouble, big trouble. Having arrived in England, he applied his wiles to credit card fraud and at a traffic stop, he was cornered by the police who on searching his vehicle found a treasure trove of evidence that sent him to prison.

In prison, he came to and sorted himself out with the outcome of studying law. He, however, was refused leave to practice in the UK that in the end it returned to Nigeria to establish himself and dabble in politics.

None is harmless fun

None of what these people did was harmless, they inveigled their way into confidences and trust, beguiled, suborned and deceived people, some of us gullible and even stupid, through their tricks people have lost savings and fortunes, none of these crimes are victimless.

I only have to look in my spam folder to find someone selling something or offering a cut of some phantom sums of money that have come into their possession by illicit means, they are usually soliciting help to launder the funds if they exist, but once they have reeled you into their enterprise, you will probably be sending them money instead, and by the time you know what is going on, they are gone, gone, gone, with your money, and playing the same tricks on another hapless customer.

Much as I have been a bit unsympathetic to those who have fallen to scams, I guess my early experience taught me to be wary of snake oil salesmen. There is no easy money to be made, except in a bequest or the luck of a lottery, but don’t be fooled because there are people out there who can make fools of us and when they do, sadly, a fool and his money are quite soon parted.

My blogs about scams

Blog - Avarice Anonymous

Blog - Was that the Real Story?

Blog - I Go Chop Your Dollars - 419 Song Expose

Blog - Silly Dingo hooked by Nubian money boobs

Blog - Beware of Online Romance Fraud

Blog - Nigeria: Advice to the Second Nigerian Astronaut

Social Engineering: Crooks preying on our parents

A menacing problem

I think this is becoming an emergency in Nigeria and it requires we begin to focus on the menace of unconscionable, unscrupulous and merciless confidence tricksters preying on the vulnerable sectors of our society.

Last year, somebody called my mother informing her of my being in trouble abroad and convincingly persuaded her to part with some money. Having tricked her the first time, they applied more pressure at which time she chatted to my siblings who were able to break her out of the spell she had fallen under and stop the criminal activity.

Using my blog, I tried to create a storm and though we never apprehended the nasty piece of work, the bank at least got involved enough for about 3 weeks trying to get hold of the person who for the pressure and bad publicity that had gone out regarding his identity was forced to go to ground.

My mother’s situation was not an exception, the fact is our once strong, able parents are now older and less agile in terms of things in their daily lives, there are people out there ready to create situations of distress, panic, anxiety or fear and by doing so getting our now vulnerable and sometimes lonely parents to part with their life’s savings.

Abductions and hypnoses

I heard today of another case where a fine and wonderful lady in her 70s had gone to withdraw some cash from a bank and as she left the bank, she was accosted by persons who abducted her and took her to some place she can no more recollect.

It is very possible she was hypnotised because she gave them the money she had withdrawn and then she was dropped off at home where the next day under some sort of influence she returned to the bank to withdraw 5 times what she withdrew before and handed it over to the gang.

At the end of the second day, she apparently came to and informed her daughter of what had happened but swore her daughter to secrecy about informing other siblings. Meanwhile the gang was trying again to get her to withdraw more money for them and thankfully to no avail.

Tackling the issue

At first one has to be thankful that she came to no physical harm but the mental anguish and scars of such an encounter will no doubt be more lasting. She is not as chatty as she used to be and she rarely leave her home; this is a lady who has travelled the world has been fiercely independent apart from the fact that she had been widowed for over 3 decades.

I do not think the case of my mother and that of this amazing lady are unique, I have the feeling it is happening a lot but the victims are not talking or telling anyone for the embarrassment, the shame or the realisation that they are a lot more vulnerable than they are ready to let on.

Banks must profile

Banks are usually the centres of this corrupt enterprise because that is where the money is with people being cajoled, blackmail, shaken-down or rustled. They need to be aware that people are targeting their customers usually gaining information about accounts or other pertinent details that will not draw suspicion to criminal activity preying on the vulnerability of the elderly.

Besides, I think banks have a greater duty of care and concern towards these vulnerable sections of society and it is important that they adopt measures that are sympathetic and cognisant of withdrawal patterns of these people – such as alerts to successive withdrawals of large sums of money, facilitation of wired transfers rather than the handling of large sums of cash and advising that senior citizens for their good be better accompanied to and from the banks.

They need to create better profiles of their customers of a certain age, install triggers to alert to unusual activity and have better levels of customer care and challenge/response scenarios to help their customers safeguard their wealth especially when things are somewhat out of the person’s control.

Any other ideas you might have towards helping our parents evade these crooks will be welcome and please post them as comments.

Thank you.

Related posts

Johnson Ademola Babatunde - I'm on your case

Nigeria: Banking on some assurances

Nigeria: Giving your relations a heads-up on scammers

Social Engineering UPS delivery

Showing fishy emails

I have decided that each time I see receive an email that threatens to expose me to scamming by reason of the genius of its construction, I will post the email and annotate it to expose the suspect activity, without getting too technical.

Looking through my inbox which receives close to 80 emails a day from so many email accounts there was one that appeared to arrive at my business account from UPS, the courier company.

From the header, I noticed there was no subject – No business with any sort of organised system should ever send a customer an email with a subject, on a personal basis, it is rude, in a business setting it is unprofessional.

Appearances and realities

The email appeared to come from UPS Support with the name of the sender, it looked official enough with a UPS.com email address too.

If you get an email from any organisation and the email domain does not reflect the organisation or business name, the sender is an impostor. Many lottery wins and collect emails do not use company email domains they can be classed as scams no matter how too good to be true the content might be. Yahoo, Hotmail, and MSN addresses should be ignored.

Where is my name in this email, they should know who they are delivering to, this is a delivery company for crying out loud. It looks like a fishing exercise.

PDF or broke

This email had an attachment with the name invoice. Be careful with attachments, the safest ones to open are ones with the PDF extension, anything else treat as suspicious, is probably a virus or a keylogger ready to steal your passwords to email or bank accounts. It would be safe to just delete those emails.

Nowadays, invoices must be emailed in PDF format, they are never too large to be undeliverable because of email service restrictions. ZIP files are like Trojan horses, open them and you can end up running a program that ruins your system or worse. EXE files, just NEVER open them. If they are TXT files, sometimes it is best to save the attachment first and then observe that they are really the format they say they are before you open them.

You must always have an up-to-date virus scanner on your system that scans emails too. AVG offers a free edition but the professional editions are inexpensive too.

Drawing you by the bait

Now to the social engineering part of this email; I have been informed that “Unfortunate we failed to deliv” then the rest of the text is obscured by an opaque grey box.

Out of frustration or curiosity, you will be tempted to find out what this was all about and find yourself opening the suspect attachment and you have been had – hook, line, and sinker.

I think it is a work of evil genius because many would end up opening the attachment, but I did not; there were two separate messages in this email.

The first was the text about a delivery and one I was not expecting, and the second was an invoice for something I cannot say I paid for.

No effect without cause

The invoice if I paid for anything should have come from the company, I bought stuff from and not from UPS except if I had engaged the services of UPS which I did not.

So, on the balance of probability, this is a scam, if UPS were unable to deliver a product, it would have arrived at my address and a note left in my post-box not an email sent to me.

The more this email looks authentic the more I am suspicious of its origins. In the worst-case scenario, I have replied to this email asking for it to be sent in legible text, with a PDF invoice and a letter sent by post explaining why they could not deliver the service. If your name is not in the email you received, do not sign off with your name.

Don’t give them more

They do not need my name or address in the reply, they should already have it – do not volunteer excess information to suspect situations.

People are looking to have you, so ensure you are not had by innocuous emails masquerading as authentic customer support emails. Benign as this might seem, it screams scamming to the rafters at best, I cannot think of what the worst of their intentions might be.

Social Engineering email scam

I don’t know you

I thought I would post this before dashing out to catch my plane to Berlin for the weekend.

This email arrived in my mailbox with the premise that one of my web mail accounts might have been illegally accessed.

That kind of information, I would like to know if my email provider is monitoring strange activity on my account, but when it is addressed to undisclosed recipients, one has to get suspicious and when they ask for your password, well, it is a scam.

Don’t believe a word

This is a classic social engineering means of instilling fear to obtain information from the unassuming, not only can this be used to obtain private details as passwords, it can be extended to more intimate information as account details, identification numbers and more.

Just class the email as junk mail and a scam attempt, NEVER give your personal details to anyone, you might be offered the opportunity to verify or change information but never to give that information for any type of administration.

The service is theirs to offer but the access codes are yours to keep and never to be shared with anyone except under the duress of the law where all adequate measures have been taken to protect your rights.

The graphic below shows my views of what I read of the email. Beware!

Ghana: Diplomat Ibrahim Sule, you are blue ice

You’ll get nowhere with a pseudonym

Annoyed does not begin to describe my outrage; I do hate so desperately to be taken for a fool.

In one of my possible guises on the World Wide Web, one of my pseudonyms seems to have ended up side-by-side with my mobile phone number.

Just at half past midnight, my phone rings with this number +233540722606 which I automatically reckoned was from Ghana. {I have no qualms about publishing this number from Ghana, if illegally used, then the owner needs to change it but it needs to be exposed.}

If you know me, you must know me

Now, one thing I so consciously do is, if I do not recognise a caller, I never first offer any information about myself, the caller must know who they are calling, the polite “Hello” is always followed by a pause to get a response with an introduction.

So, I hear, “Is that Fred?” (For instance, as one of my pseudonyms), I answer back knowing anyone who wants to speak to Fred must call from Amsterdam or the Netherlands having exchanged information in some seemingly lugubrious forum – we all have secret lives of sorts.

The man identifies himself as Diplomat Ibrahim Sule and a conversation ensues. Which I would now start from the beginning again.

Phone rings; I stir up from slumber to take the call, brain engages the number from Ghana and a million questions as to who can this be at 00:30 Central European Time and I would suppose Ghana is an hour behind – quite a bit of activity going on in the background – all suspicious antenna at Code RED.

The telephone conversation with quips

Fred: Hello {Pause}

Ibrahim: Hello, Hello, is that Fred?

Fred: Yes, it is {Recognition of pseudonym, but from Ghana? I’ll hear the rest of this.}

Ibrahim: This is Diplomat Ibrahim Sule calling from Kotoka International Airport in Accra, Ghana. {Am I supposed to be impressed by the fact that he is a diplomat or that he is in an international airport?}

Fred: Yes and how I can help you?

Ibrahim: I have these two boxes to deliver to you immediately, I need you to send your email ... {I cut him off before he finishes his sentence.}

Fred: I have no idea who you are or where you got my details from. Where exactly did you get my information from?

Ibrahim: We have no time for that discussion now, the information is in the documents I have and I am to deliver these boxes to you. Just send my your email ... {I cut him off mid-sentence again - Fred’s information can never be on documents, if they were, they would never refer to me because the information that would link me with any delivery is entirely different and I should be expecting it. Curiosity? Never that persuaded of obvious hoaxes.}

Fred: In that case, you must never call this number again, ever. {I say in a loud voice and terminate the call.}

Be a better Fred

Hopefully the next “Fred” on the list is a bit more undiplomatic and livid with rage. I am not even going to analyse this much. I have no fairy godmother in Ghana; the few people I know from Ghana are respectable ladies and gentlemen bar one who was recently a subject of my Men Without Integrity Thought Picnic.

I know no shady diplomats with false information shopping around for specific details to perpetrate confidence tricks, scams or bogus business deals.

Even the people who know Fred are never presented with some schizophrenic personality diametrically different from the real person behind that pseudonym, I doubt they would have the courage to try and pull that one on me.

Their urgency is not yours

Two boxes of what exactly? From whom? And you are at an international airport but not the one in my country and really, if they were meant for me, you would courier them to me having had the full details and definitely not from the airport to be delivered to email addresses.

What people forget as the most essential tenet is – Another unknown person’s apprehension or urgency cannot be suddenly be transferred unto someone else without proper recognition and the full establishment of trust, allowing for you to drop your guard.

He did not have time have to discuss details of where he got my details from, well, I had, time, opportunity and place; there was no way we would move to the next issue of exchange without the token of verifiable details of the caller, intent, mission and purpose.

A Ghanaian scamming a Nigerian?

One crucial point which might sound like a dig; NOT all scammers are from Nigeria, this was from Ghana and to think someone from Ghana would try to scam a person with a Nigerian heritage is at least ironic. I suppose he would have terminated the call if I had had a Nigerian accent – pseudonyms can indeed be useful.

Maybe I am just too alert for my own liking, from slumber to call to blog; roll over and take a chill pill some little voice might say.

Meanwhile, Diplomat Ibrahim Sule, box yourself up in your diplomatic boxes; I have nails, the hammer and deadweight to ensure the boxes are blue ice in the Mediterranean – Some people!

To Victor Yagba

Basic analysis of a scam letter

Every once in a while I receive one of these amusing letters from Africa offering grand opportunities to make money or engage in some nefarious business activity.

At one time, I sent the email to the Nigerian Embassy in the hope that it would be investigated by our anti-graft agencies but I soon realised that the ambassador was more interested in painting us all in the worst light than tackling issues that besmirch the good name of Nigeria.

Anyway this email arrived this morning and I felt I needed to analyse the matter just to highlight how and why this is a scam and why it would be criminal to engage in any business with people who send you letters like this.

My comments appear in brackets inline in blue within the document.

The address

From Victor Yagba

[Maybe I would have been more impressed if it had come from the office of Victor Yagba but one should not pass judgement so soon and early in the reading of the letter]

Private and Confidential

Abidjan - Côte d'Ivoire.

My Dearest One,

[My Dearest One? A long lost beau or someone who does not know how to address a formal letter and hopes that flattery would butter up the dormant fool in me to part with my money]

It is my pleasure to contact you for a business venture which I and my junoir sister, Intend to establish in your country. Though I have not met with you before but I believe, one has to risk confiding in someone to succeed sometimes in life.

[In my country? He probably does not know what country I am in, besides, if you had not met me before, you cannot be so familiar with me and address me as dearest. I do not want to be kept in confidence by complete strangers but I think there is something fishy here.

Do you not have a spell checker to ensure that your junoir sister is properly represented as junior in your quest – in fact the correct usage is younger sister, not junior sister.]

Whose confidence

I am Victor Yagba, the only son of late Chief Fredrick Yagba, from Sierra Leone in west africa. My sources of your contact gave me the courage and confidence to rely on you.

[Nice to meet you Victor Yagba, I do not know you nor your father and none of my Sierra-Leonean friends would have offered my details to you for anything.

At least we have the courtesy to first contact a person before handing over their detail – it is just the honest and decent thing to do. West Africa could do with initial capital letters. You might have courage and confidence but that is a two-way street, have you wondered if I would have any courage or confidence in you? If I had any confidence it would in thinking you are a confidence trickster.

In the end, no respectable contact of mine that really knows me would ever give up my details to anyone without first informing me and obtaining my permission. Why did they not take up your offer and rather passed you on to me?

However, let us hear your story.]

Show me the money

There is this amount of FIFTEEN Million US Dollars ($15.000.000.00) which my late father deposited with a BANK in Abidjan Capital city of Cote d'Ivoire which he wanted to used for his political ambition in our Country before he was assassinated.

[I am sorry your father was assassinated but why would he put money for his political ambitions in another country other than the one in which he is planning to contest?

I am really surprised that he could have invested this money in some other worthwhile cause rather than in African politics, it probably suggests that the source of this wealth is unauditable or ill-gotten – interesting man your father was.

If he was that rich I am also surprised he was not able to hire good enough security detail to protect him and also how did he make such rotten enemies that they could only get even by killing him.

If you were to lay your hands on this money, what is to say those assassins would not come after you and in fact, they might also come after me.

It is a lot of money by any standards and enough for anyone to kill for given the right circumstances.]

Parent crook with crooked children

Now I and my junior sister have decided to invest this money in your country or anywhere safe enough outside Africa for security and political reasons.

[My younger sister and I have decided, well, have you?

If your father was investing in politics, I wonder where you and your sister might have acquired your business acumen from.

Your stupid father should have written a decent will and testament to take care of you in his afterlife, I would suppose he died intestate and there is probably a dirty scramble for his wealth.

I would even suggest you probably could not get your hands on the more tangible assets of your father having been edged out by other heavyweights that you are not going after this fantasy amount in some non-descript account in Cote d’Ivoire.

If you legitimately had access to this money, there would be no reason to engage a third-party to move it around.]

Investing in loss leaders

We want you to help us claim and receive this money which will be transferred to your safe bank account avoid any traces of the funds and to enable you plan for the investment in your Country. I will like to invest part of the money into these three investments in your Country but, if there is any other business that is better than my suggestion, I will be very glad to follow your advice.

1). Real estate

2). The transport industry

3). Five star hotel

[This is where you really show that you think I am an idiot or you are just plain stupid. Where have you been in the world in the last 18 months? Who is investing in real estate anywhere in the world today?

House prices are falling, commercial property is cheap as dirt, everyone is offloading their portfolios, even Dubai is slowing down on their fantastic developments.

Transport industry, like one of those ramshackle buses in Sierra Leone or what really? Road haulage, do you have any idea of what it takes to run a logistics business because that is what road haulage is all about and now with a paltry $15 million?]

You will not build a decent 1-star hotel with $15 million if you wanted one that would make you any money – the tourist industry is suffering already and in other places the prices have fallen so much it is impossible to be competitive.]

3 million smackeroonies

If you can be of an assistance to us we will be pleased to offer to you 20% Of the total fund while the balance will be invested by you. I await your soonest response.

[I can be of great assistance, find a good cliff in Sierra Leone and take a good running jump off it, make sure there are rocks below, you do not want to live through this tale again.

20% of the total fund is $3 million and I was almost tempted but if only you were just a little smart and knew what you were talking about, you might have had a chance. In fact, I do not get involved with shady unknown people for anything.

I’ll make you a better deal, I’ll take 100% of the total fund and have you and your sister committed to a sanatorium and corrective institution where hopefully in time you might become responsible members of society.

Now, I would have liked to reply but I cannot find a return address, looks like I have been blind-copied or something sinister so a public response might just suffice.]

Respectfully yours,

[I have no respect for you, your mission and your father or your ilk – you guys make me sick.]

Victor Yagba

[Finally, is this you on the 419 Scam [1] site? They say your message is an orphan scam, no wonder I cannot respond – I suppose that puts paid to this criminal scheme – Woe betide you and your kin.]

Source

http://www.419scam.org/emails/2008-09/04/00496214.2.htm

Old-fashioned Ponzi Schemes as HYIPs

Making Mo-Sense about money

I have to give credit to Roosevelt at MoThanSkin who has enlightened me on a matter that has quite fascinated me.

I have lately been reading of so-called High Yield Investment Plans (HYIP) in Nigeria where in one instance a bread-winner took her life with rat poison having been swindled out of her entire savings.

The draw of these “Get Rich Quick” schemes that promise outrageous returns not obtainable in any legal business setting is amazing; the person has to suspend belief in financial reality to be involved; though many participants proselytised into these schemes never realise how they are being conned until they have been completely fleeced.

Persuading the greedy

Generally, a person is persuaded to invest a sum for a guaranteed return well above the odds, sometimes 200%, the wary investor tests the waters with a token amount and gets paid in the allotted time.

This emboldens the investor to jump in with both feet, if not borrowing to invest, at which point the investment goes into a black hole and the agency either has tales to tell or the personnel just disappear into thin air.

No shelter for the fool

Considering these schemes do not have regulatory control of financial agencies or customer protection, the need to beware is evident as customers can also be profiled for their greed and gullibility see how much more they can be enticed to part with their money as fools.

The play on words that redefines an old scam as a new financial instrument is interesting, but like I read on MoThanSkin, these are all variations on Ponzi Schemes. At various times know as Pyramid Scheme, Multi-Level Marketing and now the more professionally sounding High Yield Investment Program, Global Currency Arbitrage or Hedge Futures Trading.

They are all like snake-oil remedies that have the bite of a snake and are lethal enough to cause fatalities, both financially and literally.

Playing on trust

The scheme are generally unsustainable over time, relying on new entrants to feed the promised returns of the earlier entrants; eventually, new entrants run out leaving everyone out of pocket apart from the promoters who would have gone to ground and disappeared.

Whilst I am not saying people should not invest in these schemes much as the risk of loss is too compelling to do otherwise, sometimes like the gambler in Kenny Roger’s Gambler, those who have made it have known when to walk away and been intuitive enough to know when to run.

However, if the investor is entranced by initial returns, they should reflect on the standard small print on any financial investment document – past performance is no guarantee of future success, even if it is your very next investment.

Looking out for a scam

These are elaborate confidence tricks that earn your trust and confidence to then scam, defraud and dispossess the victim.

Like Roosevelt notes from culling the Wikipedia entry that I have also quoted below; the characteristics of Ponzi Schemes are simple.

* In a Ponzi scheme, the schemer acts as a “hub” for the victims, interacting with all of them directly. In a pyramid scheme, those who recruit additional participants benefit directly (in fact, failure to recruit typically means no investment return).

* A Ponzi scheme claims to rely on some esoteric investment approach, insider connections, etc., and often attracts well-to-do investors; pyramid schemes explicitly claim that new money will be the source of payout for the initial investments.

* A pyramid scheme is bound to collapse a lot faster, simply because of the demand for exponential increases in participants to sustain it. By contrast, Ponzi schemes can survive simply by getting most participants to "reinvest" their money, with a relatively small number of new participants.

Get out now!

Someone somewhere is in one of these schemes who has gained some return from a business model that has no underlying fundamentals and is ready to sell the world to get similar returns but would come completely short and lose everything like the gambler that has gone “all in” against a Royal Flush with just a high card.

Any scheme like this is a sinking ship and you had better bale out or jump like a rat before you go down into a watery grave of the many that belong to the fraternity with the motto – A fool and his money are so soon parted.

Reference

Pyramid Schemes Never Die; Just Evolve

I Go Chop Your Dollars - 419 Song Expose

We need to show the positives

I could not help but note the comment left in my blog about police recklessness in Amsterdam. It is a sad reflection on our society that there is a "White man's paranoia" when there is a gathering of people of African descent.

We who legally live in Western societies should and must not be afraid to gather for social events reflecting our culture, humour or traditions and we must not allow the nefarious activities of the few who besmirch the good name of our homelands to deny us the freedom to associate just because the police can be up to no good.

The freeing of the arrested detainees indicates a number of facts, the police were wrong in their assessment and actions; there are Nigerians who are law-abiding and legally resident in the Netherlands regardless of the impressions other prejudiced sections of society might have and the authorities can still be seriously embarrassed for being utterly irrational if people speak up for their having their right trampled over.

Pseudo-ambassadors undercover

If we all stay in our homes and refuse to associate with other countrymen and I can understand the reticence and suspicion of many, where would our host societies get to know about our culture, learn not to be afraid of our traditions and appreciate the good and worthy values we can bring to their societies?

We cannot allow ourselves to be completely subsumed into other cultures in the quest for acceptance, assimilation or integration, we are products of multiple cultures and we should celebrate all that makes us what we are.

Celebrating 419

This brings me to the "I go chop your dollars" song, it was released a few years ago, one does have to read the lyrics and understand what is being said because it is not so much about praising the scammers but highlighting a whole range of issues that affect the scammer and the scammed.

Having obtained the lyrics from Nikke's Index which appears to be pre-occupied with the public service of exposing scams, it is important to understand the language and the satire or irony that the song conveys - it is by no means a glorification of scam or 419 practices.

I would try and provide an exegesis for each line in order to help convey the thoughts.

I Go Chop Your Dollars

This is the song title - Chop means eat in Nigerian Pidgin English, but in this context it means swindle to spend. It has a corrupt connotation and this should be the giveaway about the song.

I don suffer no be small

Upon say I get sense

This highlights the socio-economic malaise in Nigeria, smart, intelligent and well-educated people who cannot seem to get opportunities for a career or more, it feeds a desperation to survive - in some cases, by any means possible - some turn to crime.

Poverty no good at all, no

Na im make I join this business

An excuse and a situation, one needs means to survive and we do not have the safety net of social services in Nigeria. Most of the time, the only people would have any means automatically become responsible for their extended families that whatever income they have is spread too thin to be of any effect.

Eventually, the benefactor would not be able to meet any of these needs and the supplicant has to come up with something.

A comment on Nikke's Index implied that most Africans are given to kleptocracy as a culture, we can ignore that comment, but there are issues in our societies that need to be addressed with good governance, infrastructure development, career opportunity and anti-graft revolutions.

419 no be thief, its just a game

Here he says that Advance Fee Fraud is not stealing, well, that is debatable depending on perspective. It is fraudulent no doubt because there is a false pretence in acquiring the trust that allows people to part with money for some sort of shady and corrupt deal.

Some people have turned this elaborate deception into an art or a craft and they are winning the game of deception, unfortunately.

Everybody dey play am

Everybody is playing this game. I think not, but probably everyone in that circle of desperation seeing others benefit from fraudulent activity is enticed into having a go and somehow, they do have rich pickings.

If anybody fall mugu, Ha! my brother I go chop am

This is the punch-line; if anyone is stupid enough to believe the stories then that person is game. Mugu means stupid fool - the etymology is Hausa but it has been adopted in Nigerian Pidgin English to mean the same thing.

Chorus

These are the tall tales that people believe and trust to become willing partners in the fraud and hence getting fleeced.

National Airport na me get am

I own the national airport

National Stadium na me build am

I built the national stadium

President na my sister brother

The president is my sister's brother - well that would translate to the President is my brother. However, sister in the Nigerian context could be a sibling, a relation or even close friend indigene of your town of origin.

You be the mugu, I be the master

If you believe all this, you are the stupid fool and I am the smart one - Mugu, appears again.

Oyinbo I go chop your dollar

White man, I would swindle you

I go take your money disappear

I would swindle you and be untraceable

419 is just a game, you are the loser I am the winner

Advance fee fraud is a game between you the losing fool and I the winner smart guy

The refinery na me get am,

I own the refinery - that is almost plausible, Nigeria is an oil-rich country, but really?

The contract, na you I go give am

But you go pay me small money make I bring am

I have a contract for you, but you have to pay kickbacks to get it signed over - Does the Al-Yamamah deal sound like this?

You be the mugu, I be the master... na me be the master ooo!!!!

Once again, if you believe all this, you are the stupid fool and I am the smart one

When Oyinbo play wayo, them go say na new style

When country man do im own, them go de shout bring am, kill am, die!

When a white man comes up with some money making (swindling) scheme, it is celebrated as a financial instrument, however, if my fellow countryman comes with a similar scheme he is criminalised, booked, jailed and shot down.

Oyinbo people greedy, I say them greedy

Westerners who fall for these deals are greedy, indeed they are very greedy and that is what these frauds rely on - greed.

I don see them tire thats why when them fall enter my trap o!

I am already fed up with the fact that they are greedy, but that makes them easy prey, if they can be deceived then they are game for the consequences.

I dey show them fire

I would do them for whatever I can, their money most especially.

My take

For all intents and purposes, this is really no glorification of the criminal activity, rather is simple social commentary on how desperate society is that they turn to crimes which some rationalise as games.

It highlights the willingness of the victims to believe the incredible in the hope that they can make large sums of money in some shady scheme - it is criminal too.

In what is seemingly a dog-eat-dog world, it is about pitting wits and some would in the end fall for the con because they are not half smart.

Once again, governments and law enforcement should do much to stop these activities, but it is change in the social circumstances of these countries that would sort this out - opportunity through merit, zero-tolerance of corruption and building of essential infrastructure to feed innovation and industry.

Solving the wrong problem

However, it is all a cop-out as the war on drugs - there is a growing demand in the West for the goods and rather than deal with drug addiction at home, they are spraying crops abroad.

It does not in anyway deal with the problem, rather, the makes the marketplace for drugs more violent. In the case of Advanced Fee Fraud, people who are vulnerable to tall tales about making large sums of money for doing literally nothing should first be educated and after education criminalised - it would take away the ready supply of greedy and gullible people who allow 419ers to exploit them.

The victims of fraud are not blameless in this matter and they too should be visited for being accomplices in nefarious and criminal financial activity.

Somehow, after reading through these lyrics, someone somewhere cannot take a joke and thinks it is glorifying scammers - I think not, it is the truth we hate to hear - the game, the mugu and the chop.