Abstract
419 scam (also referred to as Nigerian scam) is a popular form of fraud in which the fraudster tricks the victim into paying a certain amount of money under the promise of a future, larger payoff.Using a public dataset, in this paper, we study how these forms of scam campaigns are organized and evolve over time. In particular, we discuss the role of phone numbers as important identifiers to group messages together and depict the way scammers operate their campaigns. In fact, since the victim has to be able to contact the criminal, both email addresses and phone numbers need to be authentic and they are often unchanged and re-used for a long period of time. We also present in detail several examples of 419 scam campaigns, some of which last for several years - representing them in a graphical way and discussing their characteristics.
Highlights
Nigerian scam [1], called ‘419 scam’ as a reference to the 419 section in the Nigerian penal code [2], has been a known problem for several decades
Our work extends the study by focusing on scam email and campaign characterization that relies on phone numbers and email addresses used by scammers
6 Conclusions In this study, we empirically demonstrated the existence of 419 scam campaigns and a crucial role the phone numbers and email addresses play in 419 email scam business, in contrast to other cybercriminal schemes where email addresses may be often spoofed and phone numbers rarely used
Summary
Nigerian scam [1], called ‘419 scam’ as a reference to the 419 section in the Nigerian penal code [2], has been a known problem for several decades. The name encompasses many variations of this type of scam, like advance fee fraud, fake lottery, black money scam, etc. 419 scam is a popular form of fraud in which the fraudster tricks the victim into paying a certain amount of money under the promise of a future, larger payoff. The prosecution of such criminal activity is complicated [3] and can often be evaded by criminals. The underlying business and operation models differ. Spammers trap their victims through engineering effort, whereas scammers rely on
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