Email Security.cloud

 View Only

New 419 Scams Use Current Events to Draw Interest  

Jul 14, 2010 12:01 PM


Posted on behalf of Nicholas Johnston, Senior Software Engineer, Anti-Spam Team Symantec Hosted Services


Last year, details emerged of an investigation around 50,000 US citizens suspected of hiding large sums of money in offshore bank accounts with a Swiss bank. A court document filed by the Justice Department gives a rare glimpse into the secretive world where there are color coding systems for currencies and code names like "a nut" denote $250,000 and "a swan" denotes $1 Million. The Justice Department report further alleges that the banks encouraged wealthy clients to use Swiss-based credit cards to avoid scrutiny from US authorities.

The dispute has been rumbling on since February 2009, with Switzerland's parliament recently agreeing a rare break in bank secrecy laws and allowing details of some account holders to be turned over to US authorities.

It turns out that 419 or advance-fee fraud scammers have been following this news and are exploiting it in a new twist on 419 scams. In 419 scams, the scammer typically claims to have access to a large sum of money, but requires the recipient's help to somehow release the money. For example, the scammer might claim that as he is a diplomat and needs the transaction to be carried out "off the books". In exchange for the victim's help, the scammer offers a generous percentage of the money in return. However, before any money is paid, the victim has to pay an ever-inventive increasing series of up-front charges or fees (hence the terms “advance fee fraud"). The large amount of money never materializes, and the scam continues until the victim eventually realizes that they've been tricked, and give up.

In this "Swiss dispute" 419, the scammer claims that he's a US citizen and needs help to move his funds out of Switzerland to a "securest location" [sic]. To make the mail seem more legitimate, the scammer has included links to news stories covering the dispute.

This latest scam demonstrates the ever-inventive nature of 419 scams, and how adept the scammers are at using current events to their advantage. Symantec Hosted Services has several patents pending on its advanced 419 detection technology.



Statistics
0 Favorited
0 Views
0 Files
0 Shares
0 Downloads

Tags and Keywords

Related Entries and Links

No Related Resource entered.