A New Look At The World Of Scamming!

As a result of the pandemic, new countries increased their activities and became more dominant at scamming!

HERE IS THE SHORTLIST OF THE LEADING SCAMMER COUNTRIES

Nigeria

Nigeria has diversified its approach to scams over the years. Today Nigeria is more than the old 419 scams. They are involved in Romance Scams, Marriage Scams, Treasure & Wealth Scams, Investment Scams, Lotto Scams, Business Email Compromise BEC Scams, COVID-19 Scams, and dozens of more variants of these!

Today, the Nigerian EFCC (Economic & Financial Crimes Commission) is leading Africa in investigations and arrests, with prison sentences of up to 20 years!

Ghana

Like Nigeria, they are heavily involved in Romance and 419 style scams. Unlike Nigeria, the Ghana police are corrupt and incompetent. Virtually no scammers are arrested in Ghana.

India

India is primarily known for the phone scams impersonating government agencies and tech support scams. However, they too are involved now in the total spectrum. In fact, many Indian scamming centers are owned or contracted by Nigerians who have more than enough money to outsource in over 50 countries. Indians are especially hard on their own people, which is why the Indian government has become serious and is creating new local cybercrime police forces nationwide.

China

The Chinese are experts at this, and they’ve even used technology to defraud the general public inside and outside of China. Inside of China, it is estimated that there are more than 10 million new victims of scams a year. You will find them on every domestic social media and communications platform, including games. The dominant scam platforms are WeChat, QQ, and others.

Fortunately, China is at the forefront of arresting scammers. With the help of SCARS they did their first major arrests in 2018, and then in 2019 arrested nearly 99,000 scammers.

Israel

Israel is the leader in the world for Investment scams targeting people in North America and Europe mostly. Fake investment companies pop up overnight with highly polished documents, websites, and pitches.  While the Israeli police are excellent at their jobs, they have been unable to stop this trend.

Jamaica

Jamaica is the land of the Lotto or Sweepstake scam! They are so expert at this that a few hundred scammers bring in over USD$100 billion a year!

U.S. & Canadian law enforcement work with Jamaican police to attempt to control this, but the scammers seem to be mostly one step ahead!

Brazil

Scammers are overrunning Brazil. Brazil had nearly 5 million new victims in 2020 on WhatsApp alone! Brazilians are involved in every possible scam type, and Nigerians have set up permanent shop there. Romance scams are very common with men defrauding victims by posing as attractive women.

Unfortunately, the Brazilian Federal Police have not been doing a very good job of controlling this!

Pakistan

Military scams are becoming so prevalent that many law enforcement agencies have issued an alert. Scammers employ high-ranking authorities and masquerade as military personnel on online dating services and social networks, engaging in relationships whose sole purpose is to steal people’s pictures, which they would subsequently use to deceive others. Scammers are now posing as soldiers stationed in Pakistan. Cybercriminals are also very active in ransomware and malware.

Pakistan police have only begun to take these crimes seriously.

Indonesia / Malaysia

Nigerians are firmly embedded in these countries. They have set up hundreds of satellite operations of from 4 to 100 scammers working in a group. They are involved in all types of scams and are also the price money laundering operations for Nigerians worldwide.

The Indonesian and Malaysian cybercrime police forces are very serious about these crimes and arrest a large number of scammers each year.

Venezuela

Since the country’s economy collapsed, there has been an explosion of scams varying from dating apps to fake government bonds. The street value of the dollar has risen to 7 times the government’s value of the dollar, so dollar-based scams are the main focus. Venezuelan scammers target Latin American victims heavily for all types of scams.

There is no effective law enforcement in Venezuela.

Iran / North Korea

Iran and North Korea are countries that will do anything they can to bring in dollars, and state-sponsored scamming is high on their list. They are involved in scams targeting their own people living abroad, as well as all the usual scam types. Most of their scams are online, but there have been phone scams as well.

There is no law enforcement activity against scammers in these countries.

South Africa

South Africans were the most impacted by banking-related and investment scams. However, like all of Africa, there are also romance and many other scam types originating from South Africa.

South Africa does have a competent national police force, but so far it has not been very effective in slowing the tide.

Philippines

Aside from the typical romantic scams, the Philippines has taken it a step further. Philippines women (and men) use their real identities to scam believing that they are completely immune from arrest. However, since the Dutarte government took control the Philippines National Police has been very aggressive in rooting out scammers that have been reported.

Romania

Romania sank into poverty and corruption when communism fell. Romania has developed a reputation for effective online scams over the years. Scammers have used online dating, phishing, and the sale of non-existent items to deceive unsuspecting individuals. Romanian online con artists utilize tried and true tactics to defraud.

Europol & Interpol have been very effective over the last years in countering Romanian scammers.

Summary

In effect, almost every country has scammers. The Nigerians are spreading their style to the four corners of the globe without much resistance. However, 2020 was the year the governments worldwide finally decided to work this problem!