Nigerian Letters Research Articles

Linguistic and cultural characteristics of the “Nigerian letter”

The article examines the systemic features of the subgenre of “chain letters” – “Advance-fee scam”, which meets the criteria of anonymity, surprise and manipulativeness. The nomination “Advance-fee scam” was fixed for this type of letter thanks to their authors, financial scammers offering the recipients of letters fraudulent financial transactions with the aim of subsequently extorting money. The work revealed that the senders of the advance-fee scam are identified based on the similarity of general features, characteristics and behavior patterns, as a result of which they can be attributed to typified individuals. In the course of the research, the conceptual, figurative and value characteristics of the “financial scammer” type are highlighted. At the conceptual level, the lexeme “scammer” has a rich synonymic range, characterized by expressiveness and negative connotations. The figurative characteristic is determined by the type of male or female at the age of 30 years old. To determine the value attributes of the typed identity of the fraudster, a survey was carried out, which made it possible to identify the attitude of the carriers of today’s linguistic culture to the linguistic personality of the financial scammer studied in the article. In addition, the article notes that the main strategy of fraudsters determines their communicative behavior, in which a series of different verbal means are used to achieve the goal - to obtain material benefits through deception. The material of the study was a collection of authentic chain letters in Russian, English and French, received by the authors in the period from May 2020.

NATURE AND METHODS OF COMMITTING FRAUD USING INFORMATION-TELECOMMUNICATION TECHNOLOGIES

The article is devoted to the consideration of issues relating to the nature and methods of committing fraud using information and telecommunication technologies. The article considers and analyzes official statistics of crimes on the global Internet for 2019, as well as material damage caused by these crimes. The concept of a method of fraud is disclosed and its most important role in the characteristics of Internet fraud is determined. Particular attention is paid to the most popular methods of committing the crime in question, such as: phishing, Nigerian letters, creating a personal business, online stores, magic wallets, free communication, improved MMM; their characteristic features are indicated and promising areas for studying the above topic are highlighted. In order to systematize the data, the author proposes the division of the considered methods into groups. The article also analyzes new, not yet fully explored, methods of fraudulent activity on the Internet, and offers protective measures to prevent the threat of information and telecommunication fraud.

The use of anti-money laundering tools to regulate Ponzi and other fraudulent investment schemes

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to explore dynamic issues relating to Ponzi and other fraudulent investment schemes to demonstrate how scammers convince victims of investment opportunities that turn out to be nothing but fraudulent. Specifically, it explores the nature of Ponzi, Pyramid, Advance fees scams and the mechanisms used to defraud unsuspecting victims of their money. The risks associated with Ponzi schemes can be gleaned in the fraud case of Bernie Madoff (1998) who had been running a Ponzi scheme in the USA for 20 years and reaping investors of their returns without ever discovering it until the business collapsed. The other notorious investment scams include “the Nigerian letter frauds” which combine the threat of impersonation fraud with a variation of an advance fee scheme in which a letter is mailed to offer recipients the “opportunity” to share in a percentage of millions of dollars that the author – a self-proclaimed government official – is trying to transfer out of his country. This article assesses the possibility of using anti-money laundering regulatory tools such as a “risk based approach” and “Know Your Customer” to protect victims of fraudulent investment schemes.Design/methodology/approachThe paper was written by analysis of primary and secondary data and by utilising newspaper reports on different types of fraudulent investment schemes and the context in which they normally happen in practice. It has also utilized case studies and relevant examples to demonstrate different typologies of fraudulent schemes and the possibility of using anti-money laundering regulatory tools to regulate them.FindingsThe findings suggest that many people who fall victims of fraudulent investment schemes such as Ponzi and advance fee fraud are not gullible but lack knowledge of their sophistication and how they operate to defraud unsuspecting victims of their savings.Research limitations/implicationsThe paper was largely a library-based research, and there were no interviews carried out to corroborate some of the data used in writing it. This minimises inherent bias in the use of secondary data sources to undertake a study.Practical implicationsThe practical implication of the paper is to highlight the inherent risks in Ponzi and other fictitious investment schemes that are often cleverly conjured to exploit ignorance of the public and defraud them of their savings. It demonstrates that while financial institutions can use their regulatory tools such as KYC to safeguard financial markets from criminal exploitation, people should be vigilant to avoid falling victims of criminal exploitation and lose their savings.Social implicationsWith globalisation, the market is awash with different types of investment opportunities, but people need to keep in mind that it has also created opportunities for criminal exploitation. Some opportunities that are being offered such as advance fee and other schemes are cleverly devised to exploit ignorance of the public. Therefore, this paper highlights the pitfalls which potential investors need to bear in mind when deciding on where to invest and how to invest their money.Originality/valueResearch on Ponzi schemes, advance fee fraud and misuse of letters of credit do not seem to have received proportionate scholarly attention as other forms of financial crimes. This paper, therefore, addresses a need in the market on many issues it relates.

Corrigendum

Conway, Brian. 2014. “Religious Public Discourses and Institutional Structures: A Cross-National Analysis of Catholicism in Chile, Ireland, and Nigeria.” Sociological Perspectives 57(2):149–66. Original doi: 10.1177/0731121414523400 . In the June 2014 issue of Sociological Perspectives, there were some data discrepancies in the text and Tables 1 and 2. Please find the corrected tables and data below: [Table: see text][Table: see text] 1. On page 152, line 32; “Chilean. . . Nigerian” should be “Nigerian. . . Chilean.” This is despite the fact that—as Table 1 shows—the greatest post–Vatican II generational personnel shift within the episcopacy took place in the Irish hierarchy, followed by the Nigerian hierarchy, and then the Chilean hierarchy. 2. On page 154, line 27; “7” should be “11.” For this content analysis, the full document—ranging in length from 2 to 109 pages, with an average length of 11, 14, and 25 pages for the Chilean, Irish, and Nigerian pastoral letters, respectively—was the unit of investigation. 3. On page 156, lines 17, 18, 19, and 20; “20” should be “16,” “13” should be “10,” “1” should be “2,” “9” should be “7,” “2” should be “4,” and “34” should be “21.” I found that the church in Chile and Nigeria appealed to national identity more than its counterpart in Ireland (see Table 2)—in Chile, 16 percent of pastoral letters in the faith and morals category and 10 percent in the social action category made mention of national identity, compared with 2 and 7 percent, respectively, in the Irish case. In Nigeria, 4 percent of faith and morals and 21 percent of social action pastoral letters invoked references to national identity. 4. On page 157, lines 28, 29, and 30; “20” should be “16,” “13” should be “10,” “2” should be “4,” and “34” should be “21.” When the Chilean and Nigerian cases are compared, however, I found that the church in Nigeria was more likely to mobilize national identity in the social action domain while the church in Chile was more likely to do so in the faith and morals domain—in Chile, 16 percent of pastoral letters in the faith and morals category and 10 percent in the social action category invoked national identity compared with 4 and 21 percent, respectively, in the case of Nigeria. 5. On page 158, lines 37 and 38; “42” should be “47” and “56” should be “53.” A total of 47 percent of legitimations by the Irish hierarchy in the social action domain belonged to the secular category compared with 53 percent falling into the Catholic category.

Globalization of trust and internet confidence emails

Purpose – This paper aims to analyze Nigerian Letter scam emails in the context of processes of globalization in order to understand how and why they continue to defraud people despite the increased public awareness. Design/methodology/approach – This paper analyses over 500 emails received in an institutional email box over a nine-year period. Distinct rhetorical strategies for conveying trust and reputation were identified as indicators of the global connectedness of scammers and their victims. Findings – Scammers from Third World countries and their First World victims share similar perceptions of trust and business reputation due to the global financial flows and transnational movement of people and labour, which is strengthened by the internet. They have transformed the rhetorical elements that establish trust and reputation within the Western rational context and imbued them with new value meanings intended to defraud their victims. Originality/value – This paper is the first to interpret the success of Nigerian Letter scams as a product of processes that go beyond scammers' and their victims' social and political realities. It is valuable for crime-fighting organizations because it accounts not only for the rhetorical strategies used by the scammers but also for the underlying context that enables the spread and success of the online Confidence Letter scams.

Mimetic Desire and the Nigerian Novel: The Case of Chike Momah's Titi: Biafran Maid in Geneva

Mimetic Desire and the Nigerian Novel:The Case of Chike Momah's Titi: Biafran Maid in Geneva Terri Ochiagha (bio) René Girard's mimetic theory was first informed by Western canonical novels. Girard's paradigm, with its psychological, anthropological, and historical backing, provides explanations for universal phenomena like rivalry, violence, scapegoat mechanisms, and the religious processes of sin and redemption. While it is not reflected in his choice of literary subjects, Girard has endeavored to assert the universality of mimetic desire and its implications in "Other," non-Western cultures. However, little or no attention has been paid to novels that do not circulate primarily within Western canonical circles. To start redressing this gap in the literature, I use Girard's mimetic theory to study a Nigerian novel, Chike Momah's Titi: Biafran Maid in Geneva and show how the paradigm is suited to a novel so distant in space, time, and culture from the famous works that first inspired it. Apart from identifying the nature and phases of mimetic desire that appear in the novel, I propose other possible triangulations of desire, separating out the mimetic from the nonmimetic, and address the possible implications of the homosexual nature of the novel's interracial triangular desire. [End Page 205] A First Encounter with the Novel Since I assume that neither the author nor the novel under discussion are well known to the readers of this article, I will briefly discuss the author and trace the outline of the plot, in order to allow for an uninterrupted flow in my explication of the dialectics of mimetic desire. The situation of Chike Momah in Nigerian letters is singular. He belongs to the Ibadan golden generation of authors, heralded by Chinua Achebe's first novel, Things Fall Apart (1958), and his contemporaries at University College, Ibadan, including the Nobel laureate Wole Soyinka, plus Chukwuemeka Ike, Elechi Amadi, Christopher Okigbo, Flora Nwapa, and J. P. Clark, among others. Despite his talent, Momah did not join the literary movement that his fellow alumni inaugurated. Almost 40 years later and two years prior to his retirement from his United Nations position in 1990, he began his literary career, which has yielded five novels and several essays. Being a firsthand witness to the birth of Nigerian written literature, he was sought after by biographers and conference organizers. However, his oeuvre has not garnered sufficient attention. This could be the result of a number of factors: first, the distribution of most of his novels has been limited; second, his writings began to emerge at a time when the literary reputations of his contemporaries had long since arrived at their zenith; and third, novels that primarily seek to entertain, as most of his do, are often disregarded in the realm of postcolonial criticism. Titi: Biafran Maid in Geneva (1999) is Momah's second novel. It is the sole Nigerian Civil War novel to portray the horrors of the conflict from the viewpoint of a Biafran family living in Geneva, the Okekes. Its excellent exploration of war trauma frames an entertaining story line. This involves Titi, the Okekes' maid, and her multiple love affairs. Mimetic desire sets in during the course of her relationship with Eddy Mafa and the love triangle that ensnares them with Suzanne, Eddy's European lover. This tangled web provides the perfect substrate on which to test Girard's theory of mimetic desire. Suzanne, Titi, and Eddy: The Genesis of Mimetic Desire According to Girard, mimetic desire occurs when we crave for an object, place, status, or person simply because someone else desires it. The resulting rivalry can bring us into conflict with the models we imitate. According to this theory, [End Page 206] the romantic concept of spontaneous desire is illusory since it is learned from the Other. One therefore learns the value of desired objects from desiring subjects. Mimetic desire is schematized by a triangle. However, as we will see, not all love triangles are triangulations of mimetic desire. In Titi: Biafran Maid in Geneva, the eponymous protagonist meets Eddy at the Okekes' house. They begin a relationship, which does not show many signs of prospering beyond its physicality. Apart from the fact that both...

Internet Cross Border Crime: A Growing Problem

ABSTRACT The internet offers consumers and businesses a global marketplace. But unscrupulous individuals also recognize the potentials of cyberspace. The same scams and frauds that have been conducted by mail and phone can now be found on the World Wide Web and in email, and these cyber scams are growing. It is sometimes hard to tell the difference between reputable online sellers and criminals who use the internet to rob people. One of the most infamous scams is the “Nigerian letter.” Nigerian scam letters or 419s appear in email boxes all over the world. They offer opportunity, adventure, travel, and an abundance of wealth. If you receive an unsolicited email seeking your assistance, for which you will receive a large sum of money, do not believe it. This is almost certainly a version of the Nigerian or 419 scam. You can protect yourself by learning how to recognize the danger signs of such scams.

Parasitism and Internet auction fraud: An exploration

Most research on Internet auction fraud focuses exclusively on the relationship between the con-artist and victim. However, the con-artist and victim are situated in an ecology comprising the auction house, police, and auction community. This paper employs the ‘parasite’ metaphor as a way of building theory about Internet auction fraud. We begin by describing the parasite metaphor. We then introduce three theories from the parasitism literature and demonstrate the insights these theories can produce. The first theory, the competitive exclusion principle, highlights how separate auction markets evolve their own species or types of fraud. It also warns us that fraud elimination may be neither desirable nor feasible relative to constraining fraud to acceptable levels. The second theory details various parasite infection mechanisms to show that on-line fraud is composed of two processes; the actual deception and escape. Finally, virulence theory provides one way to predict how much harm a particular kind of fraud will cause to an individual victim. Virulence theory is also used to suggest that the auction infrastructure encourages low virulence vis-à-vis other kinds of fraud like Nigerian letter fraud.

Blending technology and the law for cyber security [Women to Watch

One day last summer, Jody Westby, chief executive officer of Global Cyber Risk, a consulting company in Washington, D.C., that helps corporations and governments safeguard their online information and networks, received a call from a former government minister. The minister told her that he had given his name and password to what turned out to be an online fraud scheme, and now he was worried. Westby, who is a lawyer as well as a cyber security and privacy expert, wasn't terribly surprised. Many computer fraud schemes no longer look like what you may remember from the Nigerian letter scam--those fishy e-mails in which someone impersonating a foreign government official asks for help getting money to an overseas bank account. Today, says Westby, counterfeit Web sites and e-mail scams can "look good."

Book Review of Cybercrime – The Reality of the Threat

If you're looking for introductory text on what cyber crime is, then this is one! But don't expect and in-depth academic text. This self-published book is very much a book for operational practitioner. An easy to read text that provides a broad overview relating to Federal Agent Nigel Phair’s experience whilst working at Australian High Tech Crime Centre in Canberra and as a member of Australian Federal Police. Some comments may seem to appear rather glib, along with several assumptions, but don't be put off; book has merit and Phair provides a good insight for newcomer wishing to learn about domain of cyber crime. introduction, I presume in an effort to allay our fears, states The Internet is not of Wild West, as was once portrayed in American Western movies. It is just another public place and Internet users need to use real-world sensibilities when operating in online environment. Phew, thank goodness for that! But his statement is quickly followed by a darker one of impending doom; the communities trusting e-commerce activities, will slowly erode over time as personal users either become victims of online crime or know someone who has. He then briefly mentions ‘the profile of cyber crime criminals’ and how hacking counterculture has completely changed into wellorganized and hierarchical groups of criminal syndicates that have realized there is substantial money to be made by criminal activity online. A geographical overview of cyber crime elements are presented as only real risk from Eastern Europe, Asia and West Africa. This is just too brief. His Eastern European perspective focuses only on Russian Mafia and one incident involving a Romanian National. Asia, primarily relates to issues in China, although Singapore and Korea do get a mention. West Africa, primarily focuses on Nigeria and Kenya; with activity relating to infamous Nigerian letters. rest of book addresses cyber crime activities under broad headings of: o Unwanted Software; o Identity Crime; o Phishing;

Ibo Spirituality and Marriage Customs On the Eve of Nigerian Independence: the Testimony of Onuora Nzekwu's Wand of Noble Wood

AbstractFor many years scholars of African religion have appreciated the potential insights that imaginative literature can provide into religious beliefs and practices in rapidly transforming societies, not least with regard to the confrontation of indigenous religions and missionary Christianity. Generally ignored, however, has been the fiction of Onuora Nzekwu, a talented Ibo novelist who during the 1960s was hailed as one founder of Nigerian letters but who stood in the shadow of Chinua Achebe and a handful of other contemporary literary giants. The present article is a study of enduring commitment to Ibo spiritual and marital traditions and the critique of Roman Catholic missionary endeavours in Nzekwu's first novel, Wand of Noble Wood (1961). It is argued that in this pioneering treatment of these recurrent themes in African literature of that decade, Nzekwu vividly highlighted the quandary in which quasi-Westernised Nigerians found themselves as they sought to come to grips with the confluence of colonial and indigenous values and folkways on the eve of national independence in 1960. Nzekwu did not speak for all Ibo intellectuals of his generation; his portrayal of the weakness of Ibo commitment to the Roman Catholic Church is squarely contradicted by other literary observers, such as T Obinkaram Echewa.

Then the Wind Changed in Africa: Nigerian Letters of Robert Hepburn Wright

Then the Wind Changed in Africa: Nigerian Letters of Robert Hepburn Wright