Critical analysis

The world is full of spam and scams. People want my money. Some are cunning. Some are rude. Some are easy to spot.

The other day I got an email from Princess Jessica from Burkina Faso. Jessica Faso, as she also goes by. Her father died, he was a king in Burkina Faso. He was wealthy, and left her a lot of money, which she wants to keep away from the greedy cousins and uncles, who'll just take it away from her, since she's a woman. The only people she can trust are her dead dad's lawyer, and me, apparently.

Now all she wants is to transfer her money to me, so we can invest the money wisely in my country. Since she's not from Nigera, where all the spammers come from, I chose to reply to Jessica.

Some excerpts from Jessica's mails: [everything in one big sic!]

"I am writing this letter in confidence believing
that if it is the wish of
God for you to help me and my family, God
almighty will bless and reward you
aboundantly and you would never regreat this."

"I will love to have a
long-term relationship with you and to know more
about you."

(bear in mind, this is the first mail)

"Now, I urgently need your humble assistance to
move this money from the
security company to your bank account and I
strongly believe that by the
grace of God, you will help me invest this money
wisely. I am ready to pay
30% of the total amount to you if you help us in
this transaction and
another 10% interest of Annual After Income to
you, for handling this
transaction for us, which you will strongly have
absolute control over."

"I am waiting to hearing from you.

Yours Sincerely,
Princess Jessica Faso(Miss)"

A princess and a share of the seven million US dollars. How could I resist? I found it prudent to go under a false name though: I took on the persona of a Spanish middle class worker.

"My father was a great fisherman in the Zaragoza
sea. He was like a king to me, so I understand
you. Please send me your picture, I want to marry
you.

'Prince" Juan.'"

I later discovered that I might have been a little rush on my information on the Zaragoza sea. It's not really related to the town Zaragoza in Spain. On the other hand, there's no University called Burkina Faso uni, as Jessica claims to attend (rather Ouagadougou University). Burkina Faso is also a republic. I don't know if there's room for kings.

Jessica replied: with renewed thanks for my interest, her plans of joining me in my country, the immense riches I'll enjoy, a nice picture of herself. But she quickly moves on to issues of more immediate practical concern:

"Therefore, all I need from you is your account number where this money will be transfered, your phone number and fax number for our easy communication and your full name and residence address, company name and address, it will help me to locate you as soon this money is transfered into your account."

I chose to focus more on our personal relations.



"Hello again Jessica.

I think you are very pretty. I also like your
car.

However, as a child I have been disappointed many
times. I do not easily trust people. I hear
people from Nigeria are bad. I don't think those
things of you, of course. However, I would like
to see more pictures of you, so I know you didn't
just find these pictures on the world wide web,
or as they say, the so-called "Internet".

When is your birthday, and what year are you
born? I am, as you can see from the picture, a
little older than me. I was born on December 4th
1965, on the Great General Franco's 72nd
birthday.

Is your leader, President Blaise Compaoré as good
as Franco?"

I was hoping to get some reactions to referring to General Franco in relation to Blaise Compaoré. No reaction. And to be fair, she already told me she was 25. Though, as a courtesy, I submitted a photo of myself. I apologize to Per Christian Ellefsen for this, but trusting the Princess Jessica won't immediately recognize "Elling".


This isn't doing it for Jessica. She gets impatient. She even hits CAPS LOCK to explain to me:

"I will be waiting to hear from you as soon as possible.
However all the modalities and logistics towards the movement of the funds to your country where you will have access to it has been worked out, feel free to tell me more about you by given me your full personal information such like.

YOUR FULL NAME AND ADDRESS
YOUR COMPANY/BUISNESS NAME AND ADDRESS
SCAN CORPY OF YOUR INTERNATIONAL PASSPORT OR DRIVEN LINCENCE
YOUR MARITAL STATUS/AGE
YOUR PHONE AND FAX NUMBER
YOUR CHIOCE BANK INFORMATION"

She also gave me the phone number to her lawyer, and wishes that there's nothing wrong with my "builtiful" country. I feel no need to tell her General Franco is dead.

Instead I propose an arrangement which entails a lot less hassle for me. Afterall, she's all about making this easy and risk free for me. So I suggest alternative means of transfer:

"The light of my life, Jessica.

I am thankful for your concern about my safety. I
am sure you have everything under control, I see
no need to call your lawyer.

However, I have some second thoughts about the
transfer. I don't personally own a bank account,
though I administer one through my work. Here in
Spain we always get paid in cash. I am afraid my
employer, or even my bank would find it
suspicious if, all of a sudden several million US
dollars would come into that account.

What I suggest is that I set up a PayPal account,
and you transfer your dear late father's money
into that account, nice and anonymously, so that
your brothers will not find out about it. How
does that sound?

I look forward to seeing you here. Maybe when you
come, I can quit my job at the car factory. I am
curious about your mother though. Is she nice?
Maybe you even have a picture of her?

Juan."

Since this I never heard from Jessica. My heart is broken.

Recently though, I have encountered a scam much harder to spot, in that it did not come through my Yahoo! mail account (my spam-account). I'v been looking for jobs, and I had a look at the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affair's pages for job openings.

There there was a posting about a job at the new founded UN agency of Center for Research and Growth. We found a number of strange issues about this posting, but given it was found at the MFA, it should be slightly more credible than my Yahoo! account. The MFA doesn't seem to have the sharpest critical eye after all, perhaps.

Points:
UNCRG does not exist. Searching for it at google yields results at the MFA only.

There is a number of weird preferances for the applicants qualifications, like:
"Average oral and written communication and analytical skills are essential."
"The preferred candidate will have up to two years of experience in environmental policy or regulatory work." (my italics)

Besides an obscenely high salary for a relatively easy job, what eventually got my spam-alarm ringing was the address to which the application is to be sent: a top domain at corp.st is not very inviting. Nothing bad about Sao Tome and Principe, but I don't think a UK UN agency would outsource their hiring process to them.

So I sent an email to the MFA with the points listed above. Today I got an email back saying:

"We apologize, there has been a mistake. The MFA does not endorse the information on the page, it is now removed.

We apologize"

Behind this somber apologize lies a little stirrup.

My email to post@mfa.no has been around. Advisors, personal's office, and the competence center have been informed.

Fun.

Does this mean anyone can just send them an email about job openings in the "UN"?

The posting is still there, but it's archived.

I guess the message is that not all scams have the shape of Nigeria.

Be critical.