Few people have escaped opening their e-mail in the morning and finding an appeal to their greedier side, offering to let them share in a multimillion-dollar bonanza tucked away in the Ministry of Whatever in some third-world country. Law enforcement officials refer to these as 419 scams, named for the section of the rather toothless criminal code of Nigeria, where most of these scams originate. Most people simply delete them, figuring no one would ever fall for the grammatically fractured and incredulous requests asking the reader to put up some of his or her own money in order to secure a piece of this windfall.
However, plenty of people do fall for this come-on, to the tune of millions of dollars a year in the U.S. alone. And the scammers are getting more sophisticated; like computer programs that learn from their mistakes, they share what works and what doesn’t throughout their network and the emails become more and more refined in their requests. And, like most expanding industries, the 419 scam has begun to create niches, targeting specific types of people, companies and businesses. And apparently, lighting is now one of them.
Several lighting distributors and retailers have reported receiving what initially looked like credible requests for purchases of lighting equipment in recent months. For some reason, Texas is large on the scammers’ radars. According to a former lighting technology sales rep there (those who agreed to talk about their experiences prefer to remain anonymous to avoid attracting the attention of other scammers), a call came in from an operator announcing a call from a TTY phone—one equipped with texting capability used by the hearing impaired, which reduces the likelihood of a trace. The operator asked for the rep’s e-mail address. Within an hour, the scammer began an e-mail dialog, asking about some specific lighting equipment. The scammer also thanked the rep for his willingness to help the hearing-impaired. “At that point I thought I was being helpful and it gave me a good feeling,” says the rep. “So I told the caller I would get pricing and availability, which I did.”
The scammer then asked that the equipment be shipped to a location in Africa, even though the buyer was located in the “UNITED STATES.” This is typical of these kinds of scams—the con artist wants shipment overseas while asserting they’re in the U.S., and often use all capital letters, oddly placed quotation marks and European English spellings (“favourite” instead of “favorite”), along with a semi-plausible explanation.
The rep smelled a scam, but the specificity of the equipment made him hesitate. The rep talked with a distributor and they decided it was definitely a scam, but weren’t certain whether the person requesting the gear was in on it or was also being conned. The rep asked for a driver’s license by fax as identification. The e-mail dialog ended abruptly.
The distributor, in the San Antonio area, is naturally wary about credit card fraud, but even he agreed that the request at first looked legitimate. “They knew what they wanted to buy—Kino Flow fixtures—and knew the approximate prices,” he recalls. When the distributor balked at shipping to Africa, the con artist asked the shipment be sent to a “partner” in Cincinnati. “They said they were calling from Houston, and gave a number with a 713 area code,” he says. “But with VOIP, you can have a number from any area code.” The number turned out to be a fax machine.
By now, the rep and the distributor knew this was a bogus sale and terminated their discussions with the scammers. But the fact that it went more than 30 seconds illustrates how letting your guard down can lead to trouble. The Nigerian scammers may not know anything about lighting, but they know how to troll the Internet, look at manufacturer’s sites, learn the model numbers and lingo, and pull distributor and sales contact info from those same sites.
As more sales migrate to the Internet, the human instinct for smelling out a scam may become more limited. On the other hand, maybe more automated sales might be beneficial. As a journalist, I’ve gotten e-mails from CEOs of major corporations whose spelling and grammar are on a par with those found in ransom notes. Combined with a talented con artist’s ability to keep probing, looking for ways to make a story more plausible, it’s not that hard to see how a scam can look real, at least for a while. And for many scammers, that’s all they need.
The distributor and rep in the story above considered contacting authorities but decided against it, anticipating having to possibly testify in a Federal case. However, the chances of that, or of anyone ever being caught, are pretty remote. But reporting the attempt does do some good—the U.S. Secret Service, a division of the Treasury Department, is the agency charged with dealing with 419 scams, and they’re working with Nigerian authorities on closing them down. Every report adds a brick in the wall. You can also visit the website of the 419 Coalition (http://home.rica.net/alphae/ 419coal/) to gather some protective tips.
Lighting is a low-profile part of the highprofile entertainment business, which makes it a sitting duck for scammers who can target companies that are used to getting requests for equipment from odd sources. The best advice is to keep your guard up. Welcome to the new reality.
Dan Daley can be reached at ddaley@plsn.com.
