The African Scam Comes From Many Countries

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Two of the top scams on the Internet are phishing and the scam letter usually originating from Nigeria. The African scam comes from other African countries as well as Nigeria. Some of these include Benin, Burkina Faso, Ghana, Ivory Coast also known as Cote D’Ivore, Sierra Leone and South Africa. This form of the Internet scam includes the check scam, coming from Africa also, where someone responds to the scam email or letter and a check is sent to them to be cashed. The check, however, is not real and when it is cashed the funds are taken out of the victim’s checking account.

In the case of phishing, the intended victim receives an email telling them there is a problem with their credit card or bank account. Other variations include the Paypal scam that tries to get the victim’s username and password in order to access their account. Another variation is the IRS scam that tells the scam victim that they are entitled to receive a refund from the IRS. All that needs to be done it is to enter personal information. The phishing email usually contains a link to a scam website that appears to be the official web site that actually has the victim's account. These scam websites are actually copies of the original and any information entered in the form that appears becomes known to the people committing the fraud. One way to check if the website is legitimate is to check the URL at the bottom of the browser to see if it has the name of the business and then the .com.

The Nigerian scam letter is generally longer than the phishing email and the African scam comes in a variety of themes. One of these is the Nigeria inheritance scam where a wealthy person died leaving millions of dollars or pounds unclaimed in a bank account. Another variation is the charity scam coming from a rich person is dying of cancer and wants the email recipient to receive their money and set up a charity.

Some scam letters appear to originate from countries other than Africa. In particular, many seem to come from Europe such as the UK lotto scam or lottery scam. Many of these emails pose as a barrister from London, England or from the UK in general. Other European countries include Spain and Netherlands. Some of the scam emails also claim to originate in Asia from countries such as Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand.

Another variation of the lottery scam comes from Yahoo or Microsoft, according to the scammer, where a scam letter claims that the scam victim has been randomly selected to receive a $1 million prize. One way to recognize a scam letter is to see that the email heading is sometimes capitalized. One place to report a scam is the FBI. Scams on the Internet have caused a great deal of harm to people financially.