One Per Cent: Meet the Yahoo Boys: Nigeria's email scammers exposed. Jim Giles, consultant (Image: AP Photo/Sunday Alamba/PA) Anyone with an inbox knows about "419 scams". They are the messages from mysterious strangers in possession of vast wealth and in need of a bank account to transfer it into. The senders are often assumed to be Nigerian, hence the name - 419 is a section of the Nigerian criminal code pertaining to fraud. Read more: "Happy spamiversary! Spam reaches 30" But what about the people behind the scams? Thanks to Joshua Oyeniyi Aransiola, a sociologist at Obafemi Awolowo University in Ile-Ife, Nigeria, the 419ers are now a little less mysterious.
In some senses, Aransiola reveals the Yahoo Boys to be much as expected. Given Nigeria's endemic levels of corruption -- the anti-corruption organisation Transparency International rates the country 143rd out of 182 worldwide -- it is no surprise that the Yahoo Boys have to grease palms in order to get goods through customs and move money between bank accounts. I don't ask people to share often, but this is one that EVERYONE needs to s. Mary Hamilton: BBC News citing Telegraph,...
White collar. Violent crime. Hackers. Osama. Phone hacking. World's Most Charming Prison? Beautiful eco-friendly…