TechCrunch has a fascinating article out about the elite of the criminals in Nigeria who flood your e-mail in box with revelations of vast fortunes waiting to be unlocked in bank accounts or, more recently, mail-order brides waiting to light up your life.
The author, Sarah Lacy, went to Nigeria to meet the best of the spammer scammers. She profiles one she calls Ibrahim Boakye who grew up poor in Lagos, showed an early genius for anything mechanical or technical, and at his peak was making "as much as $50,000 per day as a freelancer hacking into bank systems, stealing social securitynumbers and credit cards, and exposing the Web's deepest vulnerabilities for Nigeria's 'Yahoo boys,' called that because they were known for using Yahoo email addresses."
Lacy writes that "Boakye's sheer hacker genius was the most astounding. It's not just technical ability—he tries to figure out how the person who set up the security system he's trying to break thinks, and outsmart him at his own game. If he can't crack the software, he studies the hardware and learns its vulnerabilities." In other words, Boakye is a classic top-level entrepreneur, a person with not only ambition but terrific technical ability, insight into where the money is, and real psychological acumen, all in one package. He just happens to have been born into a world where all the best opportunities were in crime.
Nowadays the Internet crime economy in Nigeria is so fully evolved that "any hardcore hacking work is outsourced to Vietnam, India or elsewhere," to support what is in effect a service industry, serving the greed or cupidity of its victims before taking them for all they're worth. Daly describes a mail-order bride scammer:
This Yahoo boy carries on five to seven relationships at once, playing the dutiful girlfriend to each– down to helping them pick out their clothes for work everyday. When one suitor lost a job, he used the Web to help find him an interview and pumped up his confidence to apply. He gave him several months to get back on his feet before asking for more cash. One time, he even sent the mark cash, to show how much he — or "she"– cared. "I take care of them," he says. "They are the people who feed me."
He helps build them up; he listens to their problems. He makes them feel loved. He calls each an innocuous pet name, lest he accidentally type the wrong message into the wrong chat window. He asks for a little bit of money here and there, until men are sending him steady amounts from each paycheck. He says it takes exactly one month for a man to fall in love with him, and once he has a man's heart, no woman can take it.
What separates the successful entrepreneur from the far more commonplace failure is no different from elsewhere:
Just like you have people in the Valley looking to flip products and those in it for the long haul; in the 419 world [Article 419 of the Nigerian Criminal Code outlaws this kind of activity] you have kids who try it out for easy money, and those who commit to it. To be successful today you have to work as many hours as a Valley Internet entrepreneur and have just as long term of a focus. There's just as much creative problem solving involved; this is something you can't really teach. A lot of these Yahoo boys told me they've tried to take on apprentices, but few of them last. It's not the glamorous, quick-money world it used to be. Today being a scammer takes smarts and stamina.
Lacy concludes that this world of crime is "Nigeria's central issue that it will have to face, own up to, and tackle if the country is going to play a greater role in the global economy. Ignoring it is like ignoring China's lack of political freedom; India's deep poverty and infrasturcutre problems; or the civil war going on in Brazil's favelas."
Thanks To Frederick E. Allen / Blogs Forbes
http://blogs.forbes.com/frederickallen/2011/05/18/business-secrets-of-the-nigerian-scammers/?partner=alerts
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