Rhon­dor Dowlat

In two years, peo­ple liv­ing in T&T lost over $2 mil­lion to lot­tery scams.

A lot­tery scam is a type of ad­vance fee fraud, a ris­ing type of crime tar­get­ting In­ter­net users around the world.

T&T's Fi­nan­cial In­tel­li­gence Unit (FIU) has pub­lished ad­vi­sories on sev­er­al such fi­nan­cial scams, name­ly "e-mail hi­jack­ing," ad­vance fee fraud and "con­fer­ence scams," in or­der to as­sist the pub­lic in iden­ti­fy­ing the ac­tiv­i­ty so as to re­duce mon­e­tary loss and emo­tion­al harm, which the vic­tims suf­fer.

In fact, just re­cent­ly the FIU is­sued a warn­ing to be on the look­out for false and mis­lead­ing in­for­ma­tion be­ing cir­cu­lat­ed by peo­ple claim­ing to be FIU agents, af­ter it was brought to the body's at­ten­tion by peo­ple who had been con­tact­ed by the con artists. Ac­cord­ing to the FIU, these peo­ple may present bo­gus let­ters, e-mails, text mes­sages or faxed doc­u­ments pur­port­ing to be is­sued by the FIU.

"The FIU wish­es to make it clear that it does not charge fees for ser­vices, is­sue clear­ance cer­tifi­cates or seize as­sets of any kind; does not com­mu­ni­cate via text mes­sages or so­cial me­dia e.g. Face­book and Twit­ter and re­quests no fees. Clear­ance cer­tifi­cates or sim­i­lar in­voic­es made in the name of or on be­half of the FIU are false," a re­lease stat­ed.

While fi­nan­cial scams take many forms, the fo­cus here, ac­cord­ing to FIU pub­lic af­fairs of­fi­cer Heather Bald­win-Mc­Dow­ell, is on the ad­vance fee fraud, oth­er­wise called the "419" or "Niger­ian scam."

"The com­mon theme is a no­ti­fi­ca­tion or in­vi­ta­tion to take up an of­fer with the promise of sig­nif­i­cant sums of mon­ey or oth­er re­ward. The in­ten­tion is to per­suade the in­tend­ed vic­tim to part with his mon­ey in the ex­pec­ta­tion of re­ceiv­ing a large fu­ture mon­e­tary gain or oth­er ben­e­fit," Bald­win-Mc­Dow­ell told the Sun­day Guardian.

She said al­though the vast ma­jor­i­ty of re­cip­i­ents do not re­spond to the com­mu­ni­ca­tion, a small per­cent­age do, but as many mil­lions of mes­sages can be sent dai­ly us­ing tech­nol­o­gy it makes the scam worth­while.

"As well, of­ten per­sons are too em­bar­rassed or too ashamed to ad­mit that they were gullible, so they fail to re­port the fraud," she said.

In the past two years, dur­ing the pe­ri­od Oc­to­ber 2012 to Sept 2014, the FIU re­ceived 17 re­ports of ad­vance fee fraud. Bald­win-Mc­Dow­ell ex­plained, "These scams have in­duced cit­i­zens of T&T to wire/mail/trans­fer thou­sands of dol­lars of their sav­ings to per­sons they do not know to claim 'large for­tunes,' 'lot­tery win­nings,' or 'in­her­i­tance.'"

The re­ports re­flect that scam­mers/fraud­sters have re­quest­ed sums as low as $5,000 to as much as $400,000 (TT dol­lars) at a time.

"Any­one can be a tar­get," she added.

Wide ten­ta­cles

The scam usu­al­ly be­gins with a let­ter, e-mail, fax, text, phone call or on so­cial net­work sites seek­ing con­tact with the po­ten­tial vic­tims. The fraud­ster may im­per­son­ate a known per­son or or­gan­i­sa­tion which ex­ists, or may cre­ate a fic­ti­tious per­son or or­gan­i­sa­tion.

The in­tend­ed vic­tim is made to be­lieve they were a se­lect­ed re­cip­i­ent al­though the same com­mu­ni­ca­tion is sent to thou­sands of in­tend­ed vic­tims. The sub­ject line of an e-mail or mes­sage may read, "You are a win­ner;" "Dear con­fer­ence in­vi­tee;" "At­ten­tion (your name) Ben­e­fi­cia­ry;" "My dear friend;" "From the desk of Bar­ris­ter (name)" or "Your as­sis­tance is need­ed."

Asked by the Sun­day Guardian if the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice had launched an of­fi­cial in­ves­ti­ga­tion and if there were any peo­ple of in­ter­est thus far, Bald­win-Mc­Dow­ell replied, "By law the FIU is not al­lowed to dis­close this in­for­ma­tion or make any com­ment on this ques­tion. Re­fer to sec­tion 22 (1) of the Fi­nan­cial In­tel­li­gence Unit of Trinidad and To­ba­go Act Chap 72:01." n An­oth­er ex­am­ple is a fraud­u­lent con­fer­ence e-mail in­vi­ta­tion or Con­fer­ence Scam.

In this scam, Bald­win-Mc­Dow­ell said, "The in­tend­ed vic­tim re­ceives an e-mail in­vi­ta­tion to a con­fer­ence, sem­i­nar or oth­er aca­d­e­m­ic or pro­fes­sion­al event. The e-mail ap­pears to come from an in­ter­na­tion­al or pro­fes­sion­al or­gan­i­sa­tion such as the Unit­ed Na­tions, var­i­ous hu­man rights or­gan­i­sa­tions, non-gov­ern­men­tal or­gan­i­sa­tions, foun­da­tions, sport­ing foun­da­tions or key per­son­nel in these or­gan­i­sa­tions. The scam­mers may al­so use the names of or­gan­i­sa­tions that do not ex­ist, but close­ly re­sem­ble well-known or­gan­i­sa­tions."

These in­vi­ta­tions are usu­al­ly sent to a per­son's e-mail ad­dress or through their pro­fes­sion­al net­works such as LinkedIn.

These in­vi­ta­tions, she added, fre­quent­ly ap­peal to a benev­o­lent hu­man­i­tar­i­an cause such as hu­man rights, glob­al peace, hu­man traf­fick­ing, child abuse, racism or HIV/Aids aware­ness.

"The e-mail usu­al­ly states that con­fer­ence costs, flight and ac­com­mo­da­tion will be borne by the or­gan­is­ing com­mit­tee and that on­ly a reg­is­tra­tion or pro­cess­ing fee is re­quired," she said.

"The con­fer­ence is usu­al­ly held in an ex­ot­ic or in­ter­na­tion­al lo­ca­tion and the names of bonafide ho­tels and con­fer­ence fa­cil­i­ties are of­ten used. Visa as­sis­tance is of­fered at the time of reg­is­tra­tion. False e-tick­ets may be pro­vid­ed."

More In­fo

The Fi­nan­cial In­tel­li­gence Unit of T&T ("the FIU") is a spe­cialised in­tel­li­gence-gath­er­ing unit. It re­ceives re­ports of sus­pi­cious trans­ac­tions and ac­tiv­i­ties from fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tions and cer­tain busi­ness sec­tors. It analy­ses this in­for­ma­tion with oth­er in­for­ma­tion from var­i­ous sources and pro­duces in­tel­li­gence, which it sends to law en­force­ment agen­cies to in­ves­ti­gate. The FIU's in­tel­li­gence-gath­er­ing func­tions are there­fore sep­a­rate and dis­tinct from in­ves­tiga­tive func­tions, which are car­ried out by law en­force­ment agen­cies.

Side Bar

Com­mon types of ad­vance fee scam are:

* Lot­tery win­ner

* In­her­i­tance and its vari­ant "un­claimed mon­ey"

* Em­ploy­ment or job of­fer

* Dis­tressed rel­a­tive/friend

* Ro­mance

* On­line sales

Com­mon El­e­ments � Be on the alert for:

* Re­quests to send mon­ey us­ing wire trans­fer ser­vices such as West­ern Union and Mon­ey Gram. An in­ter­na­tion­al wire trans­fer is equiv­a­lent to send­ing cash; the trans­ac­tion is fast and can­not be re­versed.

* Non-face-to-face com­mu­ni­ca­tion where you can­not de­ter­mine the per­son's true iden­ti­ty

* De­lays or mon­e­tary hur­dles which pre­vent the deal from oc­cur­ring as planned, e.g. un­ex­pect­ed tax­es; in­sur­ance or li­cence fees; clear­ance cer­tifi­cates; le­gal fees

* Psy­cho­log­i­cal pres­sure, e.g. the of­fer will ex­pire af­ter a stip­u­lat­ed time or the mon­ey must be re­ceived to pay cer­tain costs

* False doc­u­ments, e.g. use of fake let­ters from in­ter­na­tion­al or­gan­i­sa­tions or gov­ern­ment of­fices to gain vic­tim's trust

* Fake cheques, e.g. where pay­ment to the vic­tim is re­quired to so­lid­i­fy the vic­tim's con­fi­dence in the va­lid­i­ty of the scheme

?You may seek ad­di­tion­al in­for­ma­tion on FIU Ad­vi­sories by click­ing on the FIU web­site link: www.fiu.gov.tt (Home Page>Re­sources Tab>FIU Pub­li­ca­tions>Ad­vi­sories)