Troubled Nigerian Prince? – Scammers Are Smarter Than Their Emails Look

Question:

I get so many of those stupid emails from ‘troubled princes’ or ‘a long-lost relative’, ALWAYS asking for money.  I know they’re scams, but ….don’t they know how to spell??  Almost every 2nd word is spelled wrong, not to mention the grammar.  Are these guys dumb, or what??  And how do people keep falling for these scams??

Answer:

Everyone has gotten at least one email from a troubled Nigerian prince, a long-long relative, or a damsel in distress who needs money to fly home…and instantly trashed the email.  These emails are instantly recognizable, with their unbelievable stories, and their typo-filled run-on sentences…and they always offer you a HUGE reward, if only you help them in their hour of need.  Most people recognize these emails as scams.

So why don’t these lowlifes learn how to spell, and write better, more convincing emails?  Wouldn’t they get more people to fall for their scam?

Apparently the lowlifes that write these emails are smarter (and I use that term loosely) than we think.  The poor spelling and lousy sentence structure actually HELP them to find the poor saps that will actually send money to these guys!  According to Cormac Herley (principal researcher at Microsoft Research’s Machine Learning Department), who wrote a research paper on the subject (you can read it if you want, but it contains headache-inducing math) “By sending an email that repels all but the most gullible the scammer gets the most promising marks to self-select”.

Basically, this means that by sending emails which are full of spelling and grammar mistakes, along with ‘known’ scam plots or extremely unbelievable plots (ie  the Nigerian prince), they weed out the skeptics and others that wouldn’t easily believe that a total stranger would send them millions in exchange for a ‘small’ fee.  By weeding out these people that wouldn’t ever believe their unbelievable plot, they (the scammers) can then focus on those poor saps who are most likely to believe the unbelievable, and proceed to lure them into their schemes.  By using the thoroughly scam-like emails for the initial contact, the scammers avoid wasting their valuable time communicating with people who would likely recognize the scam for what it is before they buy in completely.

The moral of the story?  Don’t underestimate the lowlifes behind The ‘troubled Nigerian Prince’.  They are smarter than their emails indicate.  AND (unfortunately) they know exactly who they are targeting with these emails.