When we talk about Nigerian Scams (also known as 419 scam) we always assume that the social engineering part is about transferring large sums of money from some African country into the receiver’s personal account. It seems that the business is not working so well anymore since the fraudsters now start to change their twist. In our spamtraps we found the email below, allegedly from a girl from Congo, who appears to search for a partner.

Fig. 1: Spam mail for Advance Fee Fraud.

This kind of fraud is not new at all. It started years ago with Eastern European girls (remember the already famous “Russian bride” trick). The deal is that the “partner” must send some amount of money to the “poor” girl in order to arrange for her arrival in his country. But, after some time, the girl is reporting that she has problems with the passport or with her sick relatives and needs some money. And then she asks for more and more money for various problems.

When the money “partner” figures out that there is something phishy going on and stops sending money, it is too late. The girl just disappears and the “partner” never hears from her again and the money are also gone.

Sorin Mustaca
Manager International Software Development