Be clever or be stupid

The opportunities for devil’s play increase as the computer wends its way into our daily lives. Ironically, it’s extremely difficult to detect computer theft except through the use of computers, or, which is more likely the case, due to the frailties of the crime’s perpetrators.

One of the earliest and most astonishing computer crimes was the 1973 Equity Funding scandal in New York. Computers were used to create fictitious insurance policy-holder records, which the company used to steal funds from companies that reinsure policies. For this grand hoax, each year the company had to manufacture many more fictitious policies in order to be able to generate the cash needed to pay premiums on the ones sold in previous years.

This scheme, in which 64,000 out of 97,000 policy-holders were found to be non-existent, fell apart when disgruntled employees began leaking information to Wall Street analysts and the New York police. The criminal suits that exploded out of Equity Funding’s collapse still reverberate through the court system. Of Equity Funding’s $3.2 billion in assets, $2.1 billion was fraudulently obtained. This happened in 1973. Even against the backdrop of today’s extremely sophisticated financial world with huge amounts involved in big-time, large-scale fraud, this 1973 Equity Funding scandal can certainly hold its place in the sun. This was big enough then to include a fraud within a fraud: $140,000 was siphoned to conspirators, unknown to the managers masterminding the bigger theft. Mind you, this happened more than 30 years ago. Present-day scammers have become even more sophisticated and clever.

Within the wide, wide world of online fraud, which happens with greater frequency, being clever is a necessity.

Before I dwell on this, however, let me just tell you something that happened more than a decade ago. I do not remember the exact year when the Second World Telecom Development Conference was held — whether it was 1994 or 1995 — but what is impossible to forget is the beautiful medieval city of Malta where the conference was held. I headed the Philippine delegation, a small one composed of government and private-sector representatives.

As is always the case in these conferences, especially if it’s an election plenipotentiary conference, invitations to cocktail receptions and dinners are received in quantity by the delegates.

But one invitation was particularly hard to resist. The recipients of the invitation were only three lady lawyers: one from Washington D.C., one from Singapore, and myself from the Philippines. And the host was a fascinating American whose reputation as a brilliant satellite engineer we all knew. He and I had been speakers at several previous conferences.

The unusual thing about the invitation was the venue for the dinner, which was at EZE, a well-known restaurant not in Malta but the south of France. Since the three of us were his only guests, it helped that he had his own Lear jet to transport us from Malta to France.

It was a terrific experience for us three lady lawyers but I think it was our host who enjoyed it most, deeply grateful as he dropped us at our Malta hotel at 2 a.m.

What was unforgettable about the experience was one story he told us while we were airborne back to Malta — something he said that would dazzle James Bond lovers. In fact, getting his briefcase, he got out a clipping and gave it to me to keep.

It’s really a very interesting story. All you have to do, the clipping said, was to pick up what was called the “Secret Connection Briefcase,” which people in espionage are familiar with. Inside, there’s a wireless telephone with a built-in scrambler, plus a voice-stress analyzer, so you can determine if the other party is lying. There is also an ordinary-looking pen that lights up if there’s a surveillance bug planted in the area. Another device detects the presence of a bomb, and a box that looks like a package of cigarettes tells you if someone is tape-recording your conversation. “The briefcase is tough; it will withstand a shot from a .357 Magnum and is primed with its own alarm system.”

The clipping’s date was November 11, 1988. Can you imagine how the briefcases of today are equipped? Some of the cleverest technical people of CCS Communications Control, Inc. of New York City, the manufacturer of the above briefcase, may have been employed to create it. And a lot of the cleverest of them are at work today.

In online banking fraud, the perpetrators are also extremely clever individuals. The most well known of these scammers are of Nigerian origin. The Nigerian scam originated decades ago, actually, originally via postal mail, then faxes, and now e-mail. The majority of these scams originate from Nigeria, but they could come from any country.

The storyline generally stays the same and the aim is to scam as much money from you as possible. And believe you me, a lot of people have become victims. The e-mail is usually a sad story about an inheritance that has no takers. Some people were killed in an accident and there is a huge amount from their life insurance policies waiting to be cashed in; or a bank has an enormous amount of money in a defunct account; or gold and certificates that have been found.

Invariably, the scam involves a huge amount of money that no one else knows about now, except you and them, and they want your help in setting up an account in your country so that the money can be deposited in it. You will receive 20 or 30 percent, or even more once you send them the account details after you have set up the bank account with an initial deposit, or, even more expeditiously, you can send them your current banking information so that the process can progress even more speedily.

Anyone that falls victim to such a scheme can be described by only one word — stupid! But let me tell you that a British businessman who earned his degree from Oxford University lost $200,000 in a scam of this nature. Same with a financial manager from Washington D.C. who had been managing funds for a political party and had gone to Princeton on a scholarship. In China there was also this elderly man who lost his entire life savings — more than the equivalent of US$400,000 — to a Nigerian scammer.

Sometimes the victims become so distraught over losing their money they kill themselves or worse. What could be worse? A 72-year-old man in the Czech Republic, after losing his life savings to a Nigerian scam, in a fit of rage and despair rushed to the Nigerian Embassy in Prague where he shot and killed the Nigerian consul in 2002.

Let me emphasize again that the only way to deal with e-mails of this nature is to delete them.

Can you imagine, just as I am winding up this article, I get an e-mail from a Daniel Eyaderna, this time not from Nigeria but from Togo! This is such a coincidence because I have not received e-mails of this nature for a long, long time. This article really was meant to be written. Since he does not know my name, he just says “Good day” and goes on to say, basically, that he is the son of the late former president of Togo and that he and his mother are owners of a “consignment box in Stallion Security Co.” under the aegis of the Ghana High Commission, with $12.5 million. Their request is for me to receive the amount as a “foreign beneficiary” in my country, after which, through their instructions and upon relaying to them my banking information, 15 percent of the amount will be given to me, etc., etc.

And it’s meant to be impressive: he’s the son of a former Togo president. I won’t even bother to find out if there was a President Eyaderna of Togo in the past. I am simply going to delete it now.

Someone very clever said that “The art of being clever is the art of knowing when to unleash it just like that.”