Internet Scams Target Soft Hearts and Big Wallets of Episcopalians
Episcopal News Service. July 15, 2003 [2003-159-A]
Jan Nunley
If you're on the Internet, especially if your email address appears on any website, you must have received at least one of them. The messages come from someone you don't know--many from Nigeria, or from another African country--with an offer that's too good to be true, or a tale so sad it can't help but touch your heart.
And if you're not careful, it can clean out your bank account, too.
The Rev. Benjamin Musoke-Lubega, Africa Partnerships Officer for the Episcopal Church Center, has been receiving an increasing number of inquiries from individuals and parishes in the U.S. who have been targeted by these scam artists. Some come by email. Others are sent by "snail mail," to names and addresses gleaned from Internet sources: parish and diocesan web sites, news stories, or churchwide directories.
Variously known as "advance fee fraud" or "419" schemes (after the relevant section of the Nigerian penal code), they're an old con made easier by the instantaneous nature of electronic communications. According to the US Secret Service's "Operation 419" website, most such schemes follow this formula:
* An individual or organization receives an email, letter or fax from someone who claims to represent a foreign government or agency, offering to transfer millions of dollars into a personal bank account;
* Documents arrive with official-looking stamps, seals and logos testifying to the authenticity of the proposal;
* The target is requested to provide banking account information, telephone/fax numbers, or blank company letterhead forms, and to provide advance fees for various taxes, attorney fees, transaction fees or bribes.
Secret Service on the trail
"The most prevalent and successful cases of Advance Fee Fraud is the fund transfer scam," says the Secret Service site. "In this scheme, a company or individual will typically receive an unsolicited letter by mail from a Nigerian claiming to be a senior civil servant. In the letter, the Nigerian will inform the recipient that he is seeking a reputable foreign company or individual into whose account he can deposit funds ranging from $10-$60 million that the Nigerian government overpaid on some procurement contract." The goal is not to clean out the victim's bank account immediately, but to persuade the victim to volunteer a huge sum later to "save the deal" when it's artificially threatened.
Sometimes the victim is encouraged to travel to Nigeria--without a visa--and winds up missing. Secret Service agents are currently on temporary assignment at the American Embassy in Lagos to help US citizens victimized by the scams. The Financial Crimes Division of the Secret Service reports it receives approximately 100 telephone calls from victims and potential victims, and up to 500 pieces of related correspondence, per day.
Appeals to Christian fellowship
But while most of the 419 scams target simple greed, a new variant seems to appeal to Christian fellowship.
An early version purports to be from a retired Nigerian military officer, a convert from Islam to Christianity, wanting to donate $45 million diverted from the Nigerian government to God's work, specifically to "your ministry." Another "new Christian convert" letter claims to come from the elderly, childless widow of a sheik killed during the Gulf War, who is suffering from cancer and looking for a place to send her wealth "because I have come to find out that wealth acquisition without Christ is vanity upon vanity."
The letter says, "I selected your church after visiting the website and I prayed over it, I am willing to donate the sum of US$5,000 000.00(Five Million US Dollars) to your Church for the development of your church and also for the less privileged."
Musoke-Lubega said that one recent scam, apparently aimed at U.S. Episcopalians, involved a handwritten, hand-addressed letter purporting to be from "Tusubira Ivy," a nursing student in Uganda, asking for money to complete her nursing training. The letter comes with an endorsement from "Sr. Kyoyagala Helen," the principal of "St. Teresa Nursing Training School" in Kampala. The only address given is a post office box; the school's return email is a free Yahoo.com account.
Easy money
The letters have gone to a broad range of Episcopalians--among others, a clergyperson in North Carolina, a bishop in New England, and members of the Church Center staff. Letters viewed by Episcopal News Service, addressed to two different locations and sent several weeks apart, are identical in wording, written on paper from a lavender legal pad.
Another letter claimed to be from the wife of a bishop needing a heart transplant. "The letter was suspicious just from looking at it," Musoke-Lubega recalled. "The name of the diocese was in a different part of the country from the address where they wanted the money sent. We checked it out and it was false."
Some American bishops have already been "taken in" by such letters. One sent a check for $300 to a location in Africa and was later dismayed to find it had been cashed in India--for $3,000. "Somebody in the line was duped," he said. "For the price of a stamp or email account, out of a hundred if they get 20 such responses they can make a killing."
Appearances can deceive
With so much need in the world, it seems hard-hearted to say no to everyone who asks. What should you do if you receive such a letter or email?
If it's an email, recommended Musoke-Lubega, "delete it." If you're intent on seeing the perpetrators brought to justice, you can send the offending message (with full headers) to the Secret Service and to their email provider's "abuse address," usually a note sent to abuse@[domainname] will reach the proper inbox.
With a letter, "the first thing to do is not to send money right away, to do some checking." His office was recently able to help a church organization that received a solicitation letter carrying the signature of an African bishop. "I was able to call the bishop, fax the information, and within two days they came back and said, ‘No, we don't know this person, even the signature doesn't belong to the bishop," he said.
If the need seems genuine, he said, it's best to channel the funds through a local African partner, such as a diocese or provincial office, which would be able to make certain that the money goes to the right person for the right purpose.
"I think there's an impulse on the part of clergy to say, ‘I have this amount in my discretionary account, why can't I help this person?'" he explained. " But the person you are helping on the other end is not what they appear to be."