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It should be noted that this scam is no longer committed just by Nigerians. It quickly branched out to other West African countries and then around the world. But, the scam, normally known as a 419-scam, refers to the section of Nigerian criminal code that outlaws advance fee fraud (AFF). The scam really started in the 1970s using paper letters. Only through the advent of email did it become a billion dollar business.

Billions? According to UltraScan, a Netherlands-based research organization that studies 419 scams, revenues exceeded USD $9 billion in 2009. A record year. Scammers are not only targetting the United States and Europe but also Korea, Vietnam and China. Asia is an 'emerging market' for fraudsters too.
Recently, Nigeria is trying to clean up its act. It has established the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC). Their authorization is to curb not only advance fee fraud, but also corruption, money laundering, bank misconduct, and other miscellaneous acts. Needless to say, they have a lot on their cover.
Western countries too have been trying to crack down. In February of this year, the U.S Justice Department convicted a man for operating AFF scams for five years out of Nigeria, Ghana and the U.S. But still, action remains rare.

The most interesting development in recent years is a community of vigilantes known as scam baiters. These people (heroes?) consider themselves by wasting the scammers' time. They build long emails expressing deep interest in the hoax, but of course, the joke in on the fraudster.

Freshly, the scam baiters have become naughtier. They have started requesting small jobs from the scammers in order to get their money. One of group maintains they were from the Church of the Painted Breast.
They asserted they had lots of money to give, but only to fellow members. Sure enough, the scammer joined the church by participating in the initiation rites.





In another case, the scam baiter claimed he was part of an organization that paid for the production of hand-drawn maps. After much negotiation, the scammer was persuaded to produce multiple maps of British towns.