They're called 419 - a secret society of Nigerians that has been running international internet scams for 10 years. It may sound foreign to you, but if you have a BTL e-mail account, you're in daily contact with the 419 group. Their tempting million dollar propositions are delivered to thousands of btl.net accounts daily. While it's not known if any Belizean has been snared in the scam - everyday - at least 5 opportunities present themselves. I found out that many who are new to the nuances of the e-mail experience could fall prey to junk mail concealing an elaborate scheme tailor made for those high risk takers:
Indira Craig
Easy money - it's the universal enticement. Imagine reading an e-mail offering you the opportunity to make tens of millions of dollars.
E-mail: Read by Nigerian Voice
It is in view of this that I seek your cooperation and assistance in the transfer of US 15 million. With respect to your reward, I have discussed it with my mother and we have decided to give you 25% of the entire sum of the... I am Aisha Abacha, daughter of the formal president of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, General Sani Abacha. And I got your contact via your country's home affairs office here in Nigeria. Based on this I decided to confide in you, I have 36 million US to invest which is ready to be transferred into your nominated account so you can open up a new account for this investment.
Indira Craig
These are the kind of bogus offers that pass every day to BTL's over 6,000 e-mail subscribers. On the average day, no less than 5 deceptive e-mails tumble into every BTL account. They are sent supposedly from Nigerian citizens trying to transfer incredible sums of money through your bank account. It's a complete fraud, and should be a transparent racket, but this con game is so elaborate that sometimes it's tough to refuse the offers.
Damian Gough
That is where the danger lies, the fact that as in any con game they prey on vulnerability, they try to gain your confidence and sometimes people who may have a life savings of fifteen, twenty thousand dollars where they worked the last twenty five years saving they get an email one day and decide this sounds like my last ditch effort to get rich and that's the danger right there. If you don't know or have any kind of proper background check from anybody who wants to do business with you, because this thing has to be looked at as a business venture. If you don't have any credible background information on the party that is proposing it to you then the proper business thing to do would be to just not do it.
Indira
But to the gullible ear, these offers can sound incredibly enticing and risk free. Damain Gough of the chamber of commerce says that if it sounds too good to be true, in this case it is and the best that one can do is ignore it.
Damian Gough
Be very cognizant of the fact that this thing is a scam that has been running a couple years now. It's really one of the more popular scams that are e-mail and internet based. Again many chambers of commerce, diplomatic missions around the world are aware of it and they do their best to inform the people they are affiliated with to ignore it. So the recommendation again is if you get it stay away from it. Ignore it, delete it, you'll have a hard time trying to track down where the original source of it came from 'cause these people tend to use a lot of remote servers and so on. Have a good laugh at it more than anything else, read through it, if you want, and just delete it right away.
Indira Craig
Despite numerous attempts, the Nigerian commission in Belize would not comment on the case, referring us to headquarters in Jamaica, which also refused to speak on what is a highly sensitive matter. BTL, which can filter the mails, also refused to comment on camera on what is a sharp downside to their service. A P.R. representative did say that mails cannot be filtered for privacy reasons. However, for the Abacha - weary mail recipients - there is hope. There are free programs on the Internet which can apply filters to your BTL account.
As according to the Chamber of Commerce there is no statistical data to confirm that Belizeans have fallen victim to this scam. However, they will continue to warn all businesses to be aware of the risk because based on their Western Union arm the possibility exists that there are individuals who have been personally affected by this very elaborate con.