Poland

Poland is targeted by "advance fee fraud" and illegal immigration brokers

Classified Polnews

Warsaw, Poland August 23, 2006. Email boxes in Poland are being flooded with advance fee fraud proposals, credit card scams, and illegal immigration schemes disguised as commercial offers. And like everywhere else in the world there are those who become victims because of lack of knowledge. And non-English speakers are particularly at risk because of a lack of public information in their local language about these frauds.

Most of the e-mail originates in Nigeria. The scams emanating from Nigeria are big business. It is estimated that this business is the third largest revenue generator for the Nigeria.

The scams take many forms. The typical letter received by most people is called the 419 scam. But there are many other scams being perpetrated as the business develops.

The typical 419 scam involves the payment of an advance fee. The scams revolve around lotteries, the transfer of large sums of money, and inheritances . The victim either pays an advance fee or has his bank account emptied.

Credit card scams often involve the request for a travel agency to make arrangements for a group of purported businessmen to travel from some location in Africa to Poland. The request is made to the Polish travel agency with the excuse that in Africa there are not many reliable travel agencies. The credit cards are generally stolen.

And then stolen credit cards are often offered to be used for the purchase of large amounts of products from Polish factories.

Illegal immigration scams involved a request to a company for the purchase of many containers of product. That is follow with a request for a letter of invitation so that the purported purchaser may get a business visa to come to Poland to look at the product. When the purported purchase gets the visa and comes to Poland he never shows up at the factory.