The Nigerian Car Scam

The 419 Scam, or Advanced Fee Scam

The Nigerian Car Scam which is also known as the 419 Scam or the Advanced Fee Scam has been around since the 80’s and is still going strong.

So strong that a large internet classified advertising site I know of closed the used car section of their site for a couple weeks so they could help out the FBI.

It’s a simple scam and actually quite brilliant. Brilliant in a deviously evil lower than pond scum way and it goes like this…

You place a 'For Sale' ad for a car (or most anything) you want to sell. You are then contacted by a “broker” from overseas who says he wants to buy your car for one of his wealthy clients in London, South America, Israel, United Arab Emirates, or wherever. You may be contacted by phone, fax or email.

Lets say you are asking $10,000.00, or whatever for your car. The Nigerian car scam “broker” will tell you they will buy your car for full price and will send you a cashiers check immediately.

When you receive the cashiers check (its bogus) you will be surprised to find that its for $13,000.00 (or whatever). Three thousand over your asking price! So you contact the, ah hem, Nigerian car scam “broker” and they are so surprised that this “book keeping error” happened. So they ask you to cash the check and send the $3000.00 overage back to them.

Of course they know that it could take at least a couple weeks for their "check" to clear and are counting on the fact that you will be a nice guy and deposit it to your account and send them the $3000.00 before their check even clears.

The "brokers" used to always say they were from Nigeria, but apparently that has changed, and now they will probably tell you they are from somewhere else and they might be too because this scam isn't just restricted to Nigeria.

If you’ve let yourself fall victim to this scam then you might as well know that you can kiss this money goodbye for good. The chances for these criminals ever being prosecuted for this crime are remote. The reason is that it is believed that the people involved in this scam are actually part of the Nigerian government.

I get these emails almost everyday and once they even used the service the phone company offers for deaf people! Why? Because using this service enables them to call worldwide for free....I'm serious! Yeah, thats right, they can pull of the Nigerian car scam toll free!

Apparently the phone company operators are not allowed to cut off these sleazebags even though they are doing this right in front of their face (no doubt due to some goofy politically correct corporate policy run amuck).

To make sure they didn't do this again (via telephone) I had to call a special number to get my phone blocked from anyone using this service. That worked fine with me since I don't know any deaf people, but if you do and they use this service to communicate with you then I'm not sure what you can do about this.

*The 5 rules for doing business with Nigeria or any advanced fee scam prone area are...

:: Never pay anything up front for ANY reason.

:: Never extend credit for any reason.

:: Never do anything until their check clears.

:: Never expect any help from the Nigerian Government.

:: Never rely on your Government to bail you out.

*Courtesy of The 419 Coalition

So now you have no reason to allow yourself to be victimized by the Nigerian car scam.