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Message: <blockquote data-quote="AtulaSiriwardane" data-source="post: 4070115" data-attributes="member: 120286">Romance angle Main article: <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romance_scam" target="_blank">Romance scam</a>A recent variant is the "Romance Scam" which is a money-for-romance angle. The victim is usually approached by the scammer on an <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Online_dating_service" target="_blank">online dating service</a>, on an <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instant_messenger" target="_blank">Instant messenger</a> (like Yahoo IM) or even social networking sites. The scammer claims to have become interested in the victim, and have pictures posted of an attractive person who is not actually the poster. The scammer uses this communication to gain the victim's confidence, and then ask for money. The offending party may claim to be interested in meeting the victim, but needs some cash up front in order to book the plane, hotel room, and other expenses. In other cases, they may claim they're trapped in a foreign country and need assistance to return, to escape imprisonment by corrupt local officials, to pay for medical expenses due to an illness contracted abroad, and so on. The scammer may also use the confidence gained by the romance angle to introduce some variant of the original Nigerian Letter scheme, such as saying they need to get money or valuables out of the country and offer to share the wealth, making the request for help in leaving the country even more attractive to the victim. A newer version of the scam is to claim to have 'information' about the fidelity of a person's significant other which they will share for a fee. This information is garnered through social networking sites by using search parameters such as 'In a relationship' or 'Married'. Anonymous emails are first sent to attempt to verify receipt, then a new web based email account is sent along with directions on how to retrieve the information.  Lottery scam Main article: <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lottery_scam" target="_blank">Lottery scam</a>The lottery scam involves fake notices of lottery wins. The winner will usually be asked to send sensitive information to a free email account. The scammer will then notify the victim that in order to release the funds, some small fee (insurance, registration, or shipping) is required. Once the fee has been sent, the scammer will invent another fee and attempt to collect it.Much like the various forms of overpayment fraud detailed above, a new variant of the lottery scam involves fake or stolen cheques being sent to the 'winner' of the lottery (these cheques representing a part payment of the winnings). The winner will then be more likely to assume that the win is legitimate and subsequently more likely to send the fee (which he does not realize is an advance fee). The cheque, and associated funds, will then be flagged by the bank when the fraud is discovered and debited from the victim's account. In 2004 a variant of the lottery scam appeared in the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States" target="_blank">United States</a>. Fraud artists using the scheme call victims on telephones; a scammer tells a victim that a government has given him or her a grant and that he or she needs to pay an advance fee, usually around 250 USD, in order to receive the grant.<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advance_fee_fraud#cite_note-32" target="_blank">[33]</a>   Hitman An e-mail is sent to the victim's inbox, supposedly from a <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hitman" target="_blank">hitman</a> who has been hired by a "close friend" of the recipient to kill him or her but will call off the hit in exchange for a large sum of money. This is usually backed up with a warning not to contact the local police or FBI, or the "hitman" will be forced to go through with the plan.<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advance_fee_fraud#cite_note-Hitman-33" target="_blank">[34]</a><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advance_fee_fraud#cite_note-StateDeptPaper-28" target="_blank">[29]</a> This is less an advance-fee fraud and more outright <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extortion" target="_blank">extortion</a>, but a reward can sometimes be offered in the form of the "hitman" offering to kill the man who ordered the original hit on the victim.   Bomb scams Related to the hitman scam, the scammer will contact a business, mall, office building or other commercial location with a bomb threat. The scammer says they will detonate the bomb unless the management of the business does as the scammer tells them. Often, the scammer says that they have the store under surveillance; however, analysis of the calls by police have established that the vast majority of threat calls are made from other states or even from outside the country. Some evidence exists that points to the scammers <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hacker_%28computer_security%29" target="_blank">hacking</a> into the store's surveillance network, but this has not been confirmed in any case and has been refuted in others.<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advance_fee_fraud#cite_note-bomb_scam-34" target="_blank">[35]</a> The scammer usually demands that the store management or people in the headquarters office of the store (if the store is a chain) send money via wire transfer to the scammer to spare the store and the people in it. Other demands of these scammers have been more personal and humiliating, such as demanding that everyone in the store disrobe.<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advance_fee_fraud#cite_note-bomb_scam-34" target="_blank">[35]</a>Because the underlying threat in the scam is a bomb threat, local law enforcement very quickly responds to the site under threat; however, because the scammer is usually nowhere near this location, the scammer is in little if any danger of being apprehended while the scam is playing out. Law enforcement, in the meantime, cannot assume the threat is anything but genuine, and therefore can do little to intervene without risking the detonation of the bomb. The fact that the threat was in reality a scam has usually not been discovered until long after the situation is over—and the extortionist has collected the money demanded.    Charity scams The scammer poses as a <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charitable_organization" target="_blank">charitable organization</a> soliciting donations to help the victims of a natural disaster, terrorist attack (such as the Sept. 11 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Trade_Center" target="_blank">World Trade Center</a> attack), regional conflict, or <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epidemic" target="_blank">epidemic</a>. <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurricane_Katrina" target="_blank">Hurricane Katrina</a> and the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2004_Indian_Ocean_earthquake" target="_blank">2004 tsunami</a> were popular targets of scammers perpetrating charity scams; other more timeless scam charities purport to be raising money for <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cancer_%28disease%29" target="_blank">cancer</a>, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AIDS" target="_blank">AIDS</a> or <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ebola_virus" target="_blank">Ebola virus</a> research, children's orphanages (scammer will pretend to work for the orphanage or a non-profit associated with it), or impersonate charities such as the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Cross" target="_blank">Red Cross</a> or <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Way_of_America" target="_blank">United Way</a>. The scammer asks for donations, often linking to online news articles to strengthen their story of a funds drive. The scammer's victims are charitable people who believe they are helping a worthy cause and expect nothing in return. Once sent, the money is gone and the scammer often disappears, though many will attempt to keep the scam going by asking for a series of payments. The victim may sometimes find themselves in legal trouble after deducting their supposed donations from their income taxes. <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States" target="_blank">United States</a> <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tax_law" target="_blank">tax law</a> states that charitable donations are only deductible if made to a qualified non-profit organization.<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advance_fee_fraud#cite_note-35" target="_blank">[36]</a> The scammer may tell the victim their donation is deductible and provide all necessary proof of donation, but the information provided by the scammer is fictional, and if audited, the victim faces stiff penalties as a result of the fraud. Though these scams have some of the highest success rates especially following a major disaster, and are employed by scammers all over the world, the average loss per victim is less than other fraud schemes. This is because, unlike scams involving a large expected payoff, the victim is far less likely to borrow money to donate or donate more than they can spare. In a related variant, the scammer will pose as a terminally ill mother, poor <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University" target="_blank">university</a> student, or other down-on-their-luck person and simply beg the victim for money for college tuition, to sponsor their children, or a similar ruse. The money, they say, will be repaid plus interest by some third party at a later date (often these third parties are some fictitious agency of the Nigerian government, or the scammer themselves once a payment from someone else is made available to them). Once the victim starts paying money to the scammer, the scammer will tell the victim that additional money is needed for unforeseen expenses, similar to most other variants; in the case of the ill mother, the children will fall ill as well and require money for a doctor's care and medicine (many scammers go as far as to say that as the sponsor of the children, the victim is legally liable for such costs), where the student might claim that a dormitory fire destroyed everything they own.</blockquote>

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