Scams, Spam, and Flim Flam

It’s been at least 20 years since I was first offered a percentage of the riches – at least $20M – of a wealthy [insert prince, top government official or other colorful Dickensian character…] from [insert Nigeria or other impoverished nation] in exchange for assisting in the transfer of his money to the U.S.

Since then I’ve won a small fortune in foreign lotteries, been requested by an American soldier serving in Iraq to allow my bank account to be the repository for $25M of Saddam Hussein’s money and even offered the opportunity to represent Toyota in a very large collection matter – by none other than the president of Toyota himself! Another is the kind note from a domain registrar of a far eastern country offering businesses the opportunity to purchase the domain names of clients’ trademarks to protect them before they are sold to others. Yes – I have been asked by several colleagues how they should handle this for their clients. So attorneys are not immune.

If the misspellings and halting language don’t tip you off, the fact that the email address of the president of Toyota would most likely have a Japanese, not Chinese, country code should. These are all scams designed to part you from your money and in some cases, your identity.

There are hundreds of versions, some more sophisticated than others. But they are very successful, due in no small part because, we are assured, they are “100 percent risk free” and offer the promise of a huge windfall.

Be a skeptic. Treat these like the SPAM they are and delete immediately. Because as we have all been reminded so often - if it’s seems too good to be true, it probably is.

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