Advance-Fee Fraud Investigation

This fraud involves the perpetrator asking for advance fee payment so that whatever project or contract envisaged could be realized. The perpetrator may write to the would-be victim informing him that the payment for his recently concluded contract with a government agency or organization has been approved by the appropriate government authority. This is always a gamble unless the perpetrator is colluding with a government official. There is no way of knowing if the signee of the letter has anything to do with a contract in the first place.

The perpetrator is usually out to defraud the would-be victim, and this he accomplishes by asking that the victims pay a certain percentage of the contract value! But the fraud does not end there. Additional wedges are ‘created’ and the victim is told of one problem and another that usually requires more money before the total contract sum is paid by the government. At a point the victim realizes that he had been scammed all along. The perpetrators then stop writing him the minute he shows any suspicion that he has been defrauded.

There are several variations of the advance-fee fraud, which originated in West Africa in the 1980s but is now a global cankerworm. Every global event is deployed in the fraud.