Which country is the best scammer in the world?
New Zealand tops list of most-scammed countries: Microsoft study. New Zealand, 16 October 2018 – New Zealanders are the most likely people in the world to have experienced a tech support scam, according to a new study from Microsoft.
Who is the richest scammer in the world?
Emmanuel Nwude is a Nigerian advance-fee fraud artist and former Director of Union Bank of Nigeria. He is known for defrauding Nelson Sakaguchi, a Director at Brazil’s Banco Noroeste based in São Paulo, of $242 million: $191 million in cash and the remainder in the form of outstanding interest, between 1995 and 1998
Which country has the most Internet fraudsters?
Nigerians
The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in the US has indicted 80 people – 77 of them Nigerians – in what it describes as the “largest case of online fraud in US history”. But most shocking for Nigerians was the separate arrest of their internationally celebrated business tycoon, Obinwanne Okeke
Spam is a global problem yet some countries do little to deter spammers from operating within their borders. These countries tend to have either weak or non-existent anti-spam laws. They become safe havens for spam operations and undermine global efforts to stop spam; even to the detriment of their own nation, networks and citizens.
Some ISPs within these countries are reluctant or outright refuse to take action without such a basis in law, even though most ISPs use “Acceptable Use Policy” (AUP) agreements which are enforced on a contractual basis. It seems that only when the world at large recognizes the poor reputation of these countries is any form of action taken.
This chart shows the number of SBL listings per country including spam sources as well as hosting of spam services – websites, DNS, etc.
Source: Spamhaus Blocklist (SBL) database. Data is compiled automatically every 24 hours from the SBL database using the number of currently listed SBL records for each network (ISP/NSP) sorted by country.
The 10 Worst Spam Countries
As of 09 November 2020 the world’s worst Spam Haven countries for enabling spamming are:
1
United States of America Number of Current Live Spam Issues: 2863
2
China Number of Current Live Spam Issues: 2797
3
Russian Federation Number of Current Live Spam Issues: 722
4
Korea, Republic of Number of Current Live Spam Issues: 552
5
Hong Kong Number of Current Live Spam Issues: 418
6
Japan Number of Current Live Spam Issues: 380
7
Germany Number of Current Live Spam Issues: 351
8
India Number of Current Live Spam Issues: 319
9
Ukraine Number of Current Live Spam Issues: 280
10
Turkey Number of Current Live Spam Issues: 267
, I’ve watched hundreds of hours of videos about scams, on YT.
The typical pattern of scam origin is as follows: India for telephone scams and Nigeria for email scams.
Not all scams originate in these 2 countries, of course, but a hefty percentage do. For example, Americans lose $US1.5 billion to tech-support scams every year, more than 80 percent originating in India, and 51 percent of all e-mail scams still originate from Nigeria.
India has the advantage of English being widely spoken (hence the preference for phone scams), and Nigerians have the advantage of having fairly decent levels of literacy (hence the preference for email scams).
Scammers from these countries exploit these strengths to try to take advantage of elderly, poor, naïve, lonely, and/or desperate people.
Neither country’s government has demonstrated a commitment to eradicating the problem, and so the scams continue. Quite often, the authorities are complicit in turning a blind eye to the activity of scammers in their jurisdiction and avail of “hush money” so they have little motivation to bring it to an end.
The activities of these scammers tarnish the international reputations of their countries and honest citizens of those countries sometimes suffer as a result. For example, sometimes freelancers are denied contracts because of the reputation of their country of origin, especially in the case of Nigeria. For many people, the first thought which comes to mind when thinking of Nigeria is “scammers,” and this can cast a cloud of suspicion over workers, even where it is not merited.
India is well-known for scamming taking place on a wide scale, too, of course, (and the Indian male online can be encumbered by certain stereotypes) but India has the advantage of being a genuine tech hub and many legitimate and respectable businesses are based there.
So, it’s a bit of a mixed bag in the case of India’s international reputation.
Nigeria, on the other hand, is mainly only known abroad as an exporter of oil, if even that, and the infamous scams can be pretty much the only thing known about Nigeria by people far afield. Additionally, this aspect of the country is often well-publicised with frequent warnings in the media about the latest scam doing the rounds, so scamming tends to be uppermost in the minds of many people in relation to mention of Nigeria, simply because it is the aspect they hear most often about and it is one that frightens them.
However, an increasing number of people have become wise to the ways of scammers, and their priority is to protect themselves and their assets. Therefore, while the Nigerian Prince Scam still generates about £700,000 per annum, scammers have had to diversify in order to keep bringing in the cash – hence the invention of other forms of scam such as the romance scam, the tech-support scam, the IRS scam, and the classified and auction scam.
People should endeavour to familiarise themselves with the modus operandi and avenues of approach of each of these scams in order to avoid becoming victims of these despicable scammers.
Perhaps Nigeria and India may one day eradicate widespread scamming within their borders.
Personally, though, I am not too hopeful as they have had ample time to do so and nothing of the sort has yet transpired.