Most people are wary of e-mails from the surviving children of Nigerian officials who need to get "a huge sum of money," say, $30 million, out of a secret hiding place and offer 30% of the sum for their help. But e-mails or phone orders for Bibles or Black's Law Dictionary, edited by Bryan A. Garner, may seem different, but are just one more variation on the Nigerian scam. Altogether, these ruses net fraudsters hundreds of millions of dollars annually, according to Secret Service estimates.
The perpetrators of advance fee fraud, or 419 scams as they are also known, based on the section of the Nigerian penal code addressing fraud schemes, are "very creative and innovative," warns the Secret Service, one of several government agencies addressing the problem. The 118-store LifeWay Christian Store chain learned just how creative last year, when it began receiving large telephone orders for Bibles with ship-to addresses in Nigeria and the U.K. Later orders arrived with U.S. delivery addresses for shipments to be forwarded to Nigeria.
"To date, we have stopped approximately $190,000 of fraudulent shipments," Melissa Mitchell, loss prevention director, told PW . In spring of last year, she first noticed a pattern of "charge backs," or credit card purchases, denied by customers that all had one thing in common: they were being shipped to Nigeria. Because credit card fraud, which Mitchell likens to "counterfeiting without making all the money" (i.e., no physical money is produced), often involves stealing the numbers from credit cards while victims still have the physical card tucked safely in their wallet, it can go undetected for as much as 20 days.
Deaf Relay System
To counter the scam, LifeWay began accepting telephone orders for shipments to Africa only through its online catalogue store. That expanded to all telephone orders placed to individual stores, especially when the Nigerians tried to get shipments through London, a not uncommon practice. The orders stopped entirely, only to resume with a request for two genuine leather Bibles valued at $500 that came in to the LifeWay store in Baltimore through the deaf relay system. This communications system allows deaf or hearing-impaired people to talk over the phone. They place a voice or text telephone (TTY) call to an operator who then calls the other party and relays the conversation between the two parties, again either by voice or text. It's time consuming because all the communication goes through the operator who has to "translate" everything to the person receiving the call.
"The deaf relay system can be a very arduous process," explained Mitchell, "and there's a tendency not to ask as many questions as you normally would. The assistant manager in Baltimore, Cindy Stewart, didn't have a good feeling about the order, and she called back the customer. A different individual answered, but in the background she heard the same man on another phone order the same merchandise with the same credit card number."
To stop the Nigerian scam and other credit card fraud, Mitchell reminds booksellers that just because a charge is authorized does not mean that it will be paid by the customer. "Most credit card companies, in order to secure the transaction, require that you get the three-digit security code and bill to and ship to addresses," she notes, having relearned this the hard way by letting a few of the early Nigerian scam shipments go through.
In another twist, which affects UPS rather than the bookseller, the customer will offer to pay for the shipping via UPS on their own account, so that the bookstore can't track it. Often the UPS account is also opened with a false credit card. A UPS spokesperson acknowledged the scam, in which the customer picks up the goods before UPS determines that the account is not valid. "We are aware of this," she said. "We constantly monitor these types of scams and change our operations."
Christian bookstores are not the only ones that have been hit by the Nigerian scam through the deaf relay system. Nearly two dozen booksellers in the New England area faced the same problem last fall. NEBA's executive director, Rusty Drugan, concurs with the advice of the Secret Service's public affairs spokesperson: "If it doesn't smell right, don't proceed."
As to catching the hucksters, that is largely out of the question given their geographical location. However, like Mitchell, booksellers can contact a Secret Service field office. She has also spoken with the CBA in Nigeria and is working with UPS on the Nigerian scam. Vigilance is necessary, because the orders tend to come in waves. As Mitchell notes, "They're always trying to find a hole in the system."
