419er strikes gold
From SANS NewsBites Vol. 9 Num. 8 mailing list.
TOP OF THE NEWS
–Former Michigan County Treasurer Allegedly Embezzled State Funds to
Pay Nigerian 419 Scammers
(25, 24 & 17 January 2007)
Former Alcona County (Michigan) Treasurer Thomas Katona has been arraigned on nine felony counts of embezzlement and one felony count of forgery for allegedly embezzling state funds to the tune of US $1.2 million; some of the money was allegedly sent to 419 fraudsters in Nigeria. Authorities became aware of the situation when a local bank alerted them to unauthorized wire transfers Katona had directed. Bank officials had cautioned Katona on several occasions that he was falling for a scam, but he ignored their warnings. Katona also allegedly lost more than US $72,000 of his own money in the scam.http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/01/25/treasurer_accused/print.html
http://www.informationweek.com/showArticle.jhtml;jsessionid=UKVFNGXFCRYXIQSNDLPCKH0CJUNN2JVN?articleID=197000242
http://www.michigan.gov/ag/0,1607,7-164-34739_34811-160250–,00.html[Editor's Note
(Schultz): It is hard to understand how someone who ostensibly is an otherwise intelligent, responsible person could allegedly have fallen for such a scam in such a big way. This shows that despite the fact that 419 scams have lost much of their lustre, they nevertheless still pose a high level of risk.
(Liston): The common misconception is that 419 scams (and their ilk) are aimed at unintelligent victims. Mr. Katona, no doubt, saw the prospect of the 419 "windfall" as a way to cover up his alleged embezzlement, and let greed and desperation overwhelm common sense. Remember: scams are
aimed at other human weaknesses -- not "stupidity."(Grefer): FTC and State Department web sites provide additional guidance at:
http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/conline/pubs/alerts/nigeralrt.htm
http://www.state.gov/www/regions/africa/naffpub.pdf(Shpantzer): These scams are profitable
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/01/02/money_launderer_caught/ and have resulted in domestic violence http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/07/20/419_shooting/ and kidnappings/ransom/killings of those who travel to Nigeria to close 'deals' with the scammers.]
I’ll bet he’s a Republican. It makes me wonder if you could survey all the people in the US that have fallen for 419 scams what the distribution of Republicans, Democrats and Independents would be and what the deviation of those figures would be to the overall population? My guess, Republicans would have a much higher percentage in falling for the scams than would be expected by their percentage of the overall voting population.
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