Fraud is everywhere and you need to be aware of it.  If you have an e–mail address, then you've no doubt been assaulted with a particular spin on an old con. It's an old swindle that's been modernized thanks to the Internet. The perpetrators now have an entire planet in which they can troll for unsuspecting dupes.

The approach on the Internet takes greed and couples it with misdirection, and you have a recipe for fraud. The e-mail arrives from an individual with the subject line indicating "Private Business proposal / Urgent reply!". When you open the e-mail, it is the most atrociously misspelled letter with some tale of woe.

In a recent version that I received, the good Samaritan is a widow with three children, who directs you to her "profile" through an internet link. The link takes you to a page that looks like a resume for the widow. The story in the e-mail goes on to say that the widow's husband used to be some high-ranking official with some African country. He died and left a safe deposit box loaded with cash which the widow was unaware of, and due to some reason she can't get access to the money, but with your help can have it directed out of the country to your bank account.

The amount of money is generally in the tens of millions of dollars (why not - if you're going to fish you might as well use big bait). For your assistance, that is for the use of your banking information with which the widow will transfer these funds out of the country, she will pay you a percentage of the loot, usually amounting to several millions of dollars.

Sounds like a great deal for you. Just give her your banking information, take deposit of tens of millions of dollars which were "stolen" by the widow's deceased husband, and collect a fee of millions of dollars for assisting the widow to get the money out of her country. Sounds easy. Do yourself a favour: delete the e-mail now.

If you allow yourself to get into this any deeper, apart from the danger in divulging your banking information (even if it's only a dupe account to be used for this transaction only), there's the issue of "good faith" money.

Somewhere along the line you'll be asked for your show of bona fides, at which time you pony up or the con is over. If you send a nickel, it's too much.

In the hopes of making a quick financial killing, you may embroil yourself in identity theft of which you may be the target, or consider that you may be aiding in a criminal enterprise the intent of which is money-laundering or worse, or that you may be participating in a criminal enterprise in a foreign jurisdiction, not to mention the various local laws that you may be contravening.

It sounds so low-tech that it's a wonder how anyone could fall for it, but people do. These cons take on a life of their own. They circulate, then disappear for a while, then circulate again. They are generally more successful during times of economic downturn, when desperate people do increasingly desperate things to save what they feel is slipping away.

Another variation combines two cons: the Nigerian letter scam and the fake cashier's cheque scam, and puts them together for a near perfect rip-off. The e-mail message or letter is from "Lottery Resources Management and Payment Verification Center." It is very official looking. And there is good news. There's been a sweepstakes and you have won.

The catch? You have to pay taxes and clearance charges of $4,975.00.

If you are awarded a prize, you don't have to pay anything for it. If someone says you have to pay for a prize, it's generally a scam. Then there's a cashier's cheque to cover the full cost of the taxes and fees, and the cheque looks authentic. The value is imprinted in the cheque, and the bank's location and phone number clearly listed.

One telltale sign that this is a scam is that there is a telephone number for the bank. Banks don't list their phone numbers on cheques to ensure that their telephone number is independently acquired, i.e. through a telephone book or directly from directory assistance. The reason the number is there is so the victims will contact the perpetrators of the scam rather than the bank itself.

The fake is so good it even takes the bank a while to track it down. But it is a fake, and it is a scam. Somewhere along the line, the mark is asked to deliver up "good faith" money, to pay real money in order to receive the big payoff which never comes. 

All these scams are old wine, new bottle. At some point the mark is asked to wire money to some unknown person. If that happens you can be certain it's a scam.

Don't fall prey to them. If it smells like manure, and looks like manure, then chances are it is manure - don't step into it!

Sid Karmazyn is a Chartered Accountant, author and speaker, who lives and works in York Region. Your comments are welcomed.

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