Why is African-scheme spam poorly written?

Factual Questions
21

[QUOTE=Jurph]
Is it possible that there’s evolutionary pressure going on here? Attorney-type letters that are written well succeed, so they’re more likely to be reused or shared within the 419 community. A poorly-written “attorney” letter that gets almost no replies won’t be copied again.
[/quote]

As I’ve already mentioned, most attorney letters are not copied. In fact, although many have similar themes and general formats, I have very few letters in my collection that have sections that appear to be copied word-for-word. Although they always include some large sum of money that writer needs assistance in getting his hands on, sometimes the source is oil funds, sometimes it is some corrupt government deal, sometimes it is some foreigner who died without a will. (In one case I got a letter alleging that a foreigner who shared my real last name - a name that is extremely rare - had died in a car crash, and they were writing to me in the expectation that I was the next of kin.) Clearly, the English has been composed independently in most of them.

It may also be worth mentioning that, although most attorney letters contain a few errors, anyone gullible to believe such a letter in the first place is not going to be put off by a few apparent typos. Since they always come from a foreigner, it’s easy to dismiss them as the kind of mistakes even an educated person might make if their first language were not English.

Naive letters are also not copied word-for-word. They also have the theme of a large amount of money that the writer needs assistence in obtaining, but they are even more varied in content than attorney letters. Sometimes the writer is the widow or daughter of some merchant or official, usually killed by some corrupt regime (I have received letters from the widows of dictators, kings, and generals, not to mention the widow of Yasser Arafat), sometimes it is missionary that is seeking to disburse charitable donations, etc.

As you point out in your second sentence, although good English enhances the versimilitude of an attorney letter, it decreases the believability of a naive letter. Hence the differences seen between the two kinds of letters.

You would think if successful letters were shared or passed around, I would get multiple copies of very similar letters. While I occasionally do get duplicates or near-duplicates, this is uncommon. They generally vary quite a bit. (That’s one reason I collect them.)

For amusement, here’s another example from my collection. This one tells me I am a beneficiary of the will of former British Prime Minister Edward Hearth. While there are some typos and oddities of expression, the English itself is pretty good, and much better than the typical “naive” letter.

22

[QUOTE=Colibri]
Here’s an example of a letter in French. It’s interesting in that it tells basically the same story as Esther Totime’s above, but it is not a straight translation. It looks to me to have the same kind of grammatical and spelling errors as the English version. However, I would be interested to hear from a native French speaker what their impression is. (While I can read French, I’m no expert.)

[/QUOTE]

Colibri, I am a professional French-English translator and interpreter. Generally speaking, the French message, which I have reproduced below, is written in good but imperfect French. I have highlighted some of the corrections in red (hope this works).

My general impression is that the level of imprefection in the French is consistent with a young woman in a French-speaking west African country, who is of upper-class origin and has received a fair amount of education for a woman in that part of the world. So in other words, the quality of the written French is interesetingly consistent with what the writer is claiming to be. Also, it confirms her claim to be in need of help, as if she really needs someone else to back her up.

I have only corrected the first few lines, but the entire message contains some 15 or 20 grammar or spelling mistakes, as well as one or two run-on sentences. However, none of these mistakes is enough to confuse the reader or make the message unclear, you will note.

Perhaps these errors ARE indeed planted there on purpose.
CHER MONSIEUR OU ET MADAME

Permetez-moi de me presenter à vous.
Je suis Mlle ColletteN’Guessan la seule fille du regretté Mr (M., not Mr.) et Mme N’Guessan Victor. Mon père était l’un des riches hommes marchand de cacao en Côte d’Ivoire. Il à eté enpoisonné (empoisonné with an ‘m’)par ses collègues pendant qu’ils était(étaient) en bâteau pour l’exportation du cacao.Quant à ma mère elle est morte quand j’étais encore bébé.Pour cette raison mon père ma traité convenablement,avant sa mort. Dans une clinique privée a abidjan en novembre 2002 il m’a secretement appellé sur son lit d’hopital pour me dire qu’il possède la somme de Huit million cinq cent mille dollars ( $8.500,000) qui se trouve dans une société de sécurité privée ici en Côte d’Ivoire Abidjan,comme des trésors d’une famille,qui porte mon nom donc,je suis la personne qui peut accéder à cet argent il m’a expliqué que c’est à cause de son argent qu’il à été empoisonné.Dans ce cas il m’a dit de chercher un partenaire étranger de mon choix ou je pourrai transferer l’argent afin de l’investir dans différents secteurs comme
dans le domaine de l’immobilier ou dans l’hôtelerie.
Cher Monsieur je souhaite votre assistance.Je demande humblement votre aide ainsi que des suggestions et des idées venant de vous seront grandement appréciées.
Maintenant, je voudrais que vous m’aidiez :

  1. Pour les retrait de ces fonds
    2)A venir au près de vous pour finir mes études en m’assurant le gîte et le couvert?
    3)En gardant cet argent parce que je n’ai que 19 ans
    4)Dites moi est-ce que,je peux vous faire entièrement confiance?
    5)Pouvez-vous honnêtement me prendre en tant que vos propres et m’aider?
    6)Quel pourcentage exigerez-vous une fois l’argent dans votre pays?

Je vous prie de bien vouloir me donner une reponse rapide pour que je puisse vous expédier les documents nécessaires pour cet transfert.
Ma vie n’est pas en sécurité ici car mes oncles veulent attenter à ma vie pour prendre les autres biens de mon père, heureusement ils ne sont pas au courant de cet argent.
Merci,

23

[QUOTE=Valteron]
Colibri, I am a professional French-English translator and interpreter. Generally speaking, the French message, which I have reproduced below, is written in good but imperfect French. I have highlighted some of the corrections in red (hope this works).

My general impression is that the level of imprefection in the French is consistent with a young woman in a French-speaking west African country, who is of upper-class origin and has received a fair amount of education for a woman in that part of the world. So in other words, the quality of the written French is interesetingly consistent with what the writer is claiming to be. Also, it confirms her claim to be in need of help, as if she really needs someone else to back her up.

I have only corrected the first few lines, but the entire message contains some 15 or 20 grammar or spelling mistakes, as well as one or two run-on sentences. However, none of these mistakes is enough to confuse the reader or make the message unclear, you will note.
[/quote]

Thanks. In other words, it’s rather consistent with the level of English found in the Esther Totime letter I quoted above, which although it has many spelling and grammatical mistakes and some odd phrasings, is perfectly understandable. (It’s interesting that the level seems to be so similar, even though, since the Ivory Coast is a francophone country, Ivorians might be expected to be much better in French than in English).

I would note that some Nigerians themselves are fluent in French as well as English, since there is a lot of contact with neighboring francophone countries. My French/English translator in Gabon was a Nigerian.

24

[QUOTE=“Colette N’Guessan”, via Valteron]
Je suis Mlle ColletteN’Guessan la seule fille du regretté Mr (M., not Mr.) et Mme N’Guessan Victor.
[/QUOTE]

Hijack: I’ve seen a few francophones use “Mr” or “Mr.” instead of “M.” as the abbreviation for “monsieur”, and I’m not sure it’s always due to the influence of English. In this case, for example, I don’t see why English usage would interfere with the French skills of someone from Côte d’Ivoire – how common is English in this country, anyway? So does anyone know if it might be an archaic usage?

25

My take on the French letter is that it’s a mix of ‘cut and paste’, translation and re-writes.
Apart from the issue of spelling / grammar mistakes, there are a number of instances of awkward ‘foreign sounding’ usages in the letter -

   not sure if this is translated, or if there's simply a clause missing due to cut and paste

sounds like a translation of ‘secretly called’, sur son lit is also a little odd

mixing the use of decimal and thousands separators

 (en tant que ?) odd phrase, could be just confused, or could be a mis-translation of 'as'

sounds a lot like the American 'partner of my choice' formulation, rather than the more natural 'choisir un partenaire étranger'

 a fairly archaic phrase -  the more common term is 'm'héberger', though I'm not sure if this is local usage or babelfish.  French usage also requires a space before question marks etc. although this letter doesn't leave a space after periods either...

doesn’t mean much in French, and is presumably a translation of something like ‘take me as your own’ (not necessarily from English though) I don’t know what ‘honnêtement’ could mean in this sentence - ‘vraiment’ ? the adverb followed by verb formation that shows up throughout the letter is also pretty awkward in French, as it generally doesn’t follow the ‘cadences majeures’ rule, not exactly an error, but a definite indicator of a non-native speaker.

A quick Google of ‘mes oncles veulent attenter à ma vie’ (another awkward phrase) shows three different scam letters containing this phrase. It’s interesting that language errors make it easy to track down these letters, so if the writers include the errors on purpose, as per a previous poster, they may not be doing themselves any favors !

OK - I’m definitely spending too much time on this, just found the same letter in English by Googling

http://www.airlinepilotforums.com/archive/index.php/t-1646.html

Interesting thread !

26

[QUOTE=Themenin]
OK - I’m definitely spending too much time on this, just found the same letter in English by Googling http://www.airlinepilotforums.com/archive/index.php/t-1646.html

[/QUOTE]

While it tells a similar story, as with the Esther Totime letter I posted, the letter in French is not a direct translation of that letter. For one thing, the French letter says the woman’s father was poisoned (as does the Totime letter), while that one says he died “'during the political war crisis.” This letter does not accuse anyone in particular of causing his death, while the French letter says he was killed by his business associates, and the Totime letter accuses the woman’s uncle. In this letter and the French one the woman is afraid that her uncles will kill her, but not in the Totime letter. And so on.

There are some very close similarities (e.g. the phrase “since then my father took me so special” in both English letters, and “Pour cette raison mon père ma traité convenablement”’ in the French; although the figures are different, all three letters use a mix of decimals and commas in stating the amount of the currency). Obviously the letters are related, and some bits are exactly the same. But they are not mere copies or translations; they have been re-written in large part.

27

I can’t say that I’ve ever paid that much attention to the garbage that ends up in my spam mailbox, but my impression has always been that they are, well, spammers. I.e. they operate on the basis of volume rather than quality. Why waste time on english classes or fine-tuning the grammar of your solicitation when you could use that time harvesting more email addresses from webpages, or cobbling together a new-ish variation of your cousin’s sucessful ‘gold mine owner who died in a car crash’ letter to send to all the people who received your ‘I stole the budget for an airport’ and ‘my husband was the minister of finance’ emails?

My favourite was from someone who was apparently the accountant of some deceased german gentleman involved in the ‘oilgold’ business. I’m supposed to send money to someone who can’t even search & replace? :dubious:

28

Am I the first to point out that the (mis)use of “African-American” in the title is the type of example that people are always asking for when we talk about the use of the term? I don’t think that any American, let alone black ones have anything to do with the Nigerian scams.

29

I often wondered why “Nigerian” letters of this type had such bad English, as English is Nigeria’s official language, but if they really come from all over Africa then that makes more sense…

30

Shagnasty, where do you see “American” in this thread title?

31

This 419 scam that I found via The Register is about the most bizzare one I have ever come across. It purpots to be from an American Marine serving in Iraq who has found some large amount of money, cocaine and WMDs. The language is totally off and I can’t believe that this is intentional.

32

[QUOTE=Wee Bairn]
I often wondered why “Nigerian” letters of this type had such bad English, as English is Nigeria’s official language, but if they really come from all over Africa then that makes more sense…
[/QUOTE]

I’m uncertain how many of the letters that purport to come from elsewhere than Nigeria actually do so. Perhaps they actually continue to originate in Nigeria, but the scammers just pretend they come from somewhere else. Perhaps they come from Nigerians living elsewhere. And it’s also possible that they actually come from copycat scammers living in the places they alledgedly come from. But I certainly wouldn’t assume that the locations given in the letters reflect their actual locations.

I see little difference in these letters regardless of where they supposedly originate from, whether Nigeria, Ghana, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Cote d’Ivoire, Hong Kong, Cyprus, the Philippines, or the UK. The country of supposed origin can’t be used to account for the quality of the English. The English letters “from” Cote d’Ivoire are pretty similar in quality to those “from” the anglophone countries. (Interestingly, while I have received both English and French letters from francophone countries, I have never received a letter in French from an anglophone country.)

33

This is really fascinating, and kudos to y’all who are keeping track of the finer distinctions. I’ve heard of it, but, fortunately, have not been on the receiving end.

Does anyone really fall for this ??? I just can’t imagine getting an e-mail like this and thinking it was at all real. What are the stats on people taking this bait? I’m just boggled, but, then, I never buy anything from telemarketers, either, and can’t figure out why anyone would.

34

A couple of years ago, I asked the Throbbing Brain “do Nigerians really talk like that?” I worded the question like one of the stilted letters, and the general consensus seemed to be that among educated Nigerians, very formal, though somewhat butchered Victorian-style English is the norm among English speakers from Nigeria, and also many other British colonies such as India.

I’ve been collecting Russian Bride letters, and the English is always horrible. It’s a distinct kind of bad, though, much different than the bad Nigerian letters.

To compare, the following are Nigerian “sweetheart scam” letters.

35

[QUOTE=elelle]
This is really fascinating, and kudos to y’all who are keeping track of the finer distinctions. I’ve heard of it, but, fortunately, have not been on the receiving end.
[/quote]

You’ve never received a Nigerian letter? You must be one of the last people on the Internet never to have gotten one. I received my first one by fax, I think in the early 1990s. I’ve certainly received hundreds by now. (But then, I’ve had the same work e-mail for many years, and having worked in West Africa, my e-mail address is circulating there like chum in shark-fested waters.)

According to this site:

There really are a great variety of these scams. This Wikipedia article gives various examples. One that I’ve seen a lot of in recent years is the lottery scam:

I calculate I have won several billion dollars to date.

Regarding my previous post, I see the Wiki article has the following information:

36

Thank God no white American guy could ever get on the internet and run a fraud pretending to be an ignorant African guy. Where would we be then?

Tris

37

No, honestly, I’ve not got a one of em, just stupid viagra and drug and rolex mass mailings ; somehow I expect that might change shortly :smack:

I just don’t get it at all, at All; it’s like a peddlar puts a foot in my door trying to sell something, “Uh, No Thanks”

“Gee, this person from all across the waters wants Me to get the big bucks! Wow!”
As with the peddlar, “Don’t think so…” I’m amazed anyone would fall for it, it’s so obviously a scam.

Continue with the nice distinctions here, though, it’s very interesting.

38

[QUOTE=Colibri]
Now, there are a couple of typos, but overall that could have come from someone who is who he purports to be. In fact, when I receive authentic official letters in English from non-English speakers, they often have worse errors.
[/QUOTE]

When I receive authentic official letters in English from English speakers, they often have far worse errors!

39

I used to lurk at www.419eater.com - like CMYK

They know a heck of a lot about how the 419ers are organized.
For example they often work in a sort of pyramid, the ones at the bottom do the grunt work and pass likely looking marks up the line.

A boss guy is called an ‘oga’. They call the marks ‘mugus’ which means idiots.

They also run tag teams - I’ve seen evidence of that.

While 419 letters come from all over the place, easily checked by looking at Email headers, they are nearly always sent by Nigerians - they have a huge diaspora. For some reason scamming is endemic to Nigerian culture. (One gets phishing from East Europe and some begging from India - the Far East like fake trading web sites).

They sell on template letters and there is quite an industry in making up fake documentation.

It seems that most Nigerians speak English, but it is a ‘pidgin’ version, so they are not really aware of some of the things that strike us as peculiar.

Their legal stuff comes from their own legal system, which is a peculiar mutation of the British one. In the UK a Barrister is a lawyer that fronts court appearances, but in Nigeria it is a top dog lawyer.

Another ‘funny’ is their use of the word modalities which means ‘things to be done’ - drop that in a conversation and you’ll get some laughs from people who have looked into 419.

They can be amazingly linguistically versatile, one person managed to switch their bait into Russian …

If anyone wants to know more about 419, then they would be wise to look at the 419eater site, especially in the Forum.

Although, at first sight 419eater looks like people having fun, the underlying motive is to make people aware of scams - the humour is a way of spreading the word.

40

[QUOTE=Colibri]

As an item of interest, here’s one in Spanish, claiming to be from the Ivory Coast (Costa de Marfil). This is an “attorney” type letter, and the Spanish isn’t too bad. I don’t know exactly what to make of this one. I don’t know whether it’s someone in Africa who has learned Spanish (perhaps from Equatorial Guinea, which was once a Spanish colony - when I worked in Gabon, I met a couple of guys from there and was able to communicate with them in Spanish), or someone from Latin America who is copying the scam. The latter seems to be unlikely, though, since I don’t know why they would claim to be from Ivory Coast in that case. (One of the more bizarre letters I have is from “Ramos Qropenza”, who claimed to be a Venezuelan living in Cyprus, but wrote to me in English.)
[/QUOTE]

The Spanish isn’t too bad if the reader doesn’t speak Spanish… there isn’t a single sentence that sounds like it was written by someone who actually speaks the language.