Is Not Even Space Safe ... from Fake Nigerian Princes?

So, I really don't even know what to say about this, except for the fact that I couldn't help but laugh:

Won’t you help a poor Nigerian astronaut who just wants to come home from space?

In reality, this type of scam, known as a "Nigerian 419 scam", is a huge deal on the Internet. It's a modern-day version of the classic Spanish Prisoner scam, an advance fee confidence fraud where the con convinces the mark to send him money on a promise that he will be repaid at a premium later. We laugh at 419 scams (in at least two episodes of The Office, Michael Scott has revealed that he is a continuing victim to them), but in reality they are very effective.



It's unclear how successful the Spanish Prisoner scam was back in its heyday, but the 419 scam enjoys an advantage that fake prisoners pushing nonexistent gold never did: it is essentially free. The brilliance of the 419 scam is its incredible economies of scale, since it costs more or less the same amount of time and resources to send an e-mail to 20 people as 2000. (That's not entirely true, but, for the sake of argument, it's close enough.) The Spanish Prisoner had to write and post as many letters as he had intended targets, but the Nigerian Prince can simply buy a long list of e-mails, send something to all of them, and see what sticks. Even if only one person in a thousand responds, the 419 scammer can make a healthy profit.

What makes these scams so problematic is that they are virtually impossible to prosecute. A would-be prosecutor has to rely on a lot of luck. Victims rarely come forward (due to embarrassment). More importantly, the crime is almost always cross-border. China, the country with the highest population of Internet users, accounts for about 22% of all users of the Internet. This means that the odds of two random Internet users being in the same country is never more than 1 in 5. Nigeria, one of top origin countries for 419 scams, is home to about 2% of global Internet users.

In theory, the Cybercrime Convention should present a framework for responding to these sorts of crimes. Even if the source country and the victim's country are members of the Cybercrime Convention, and even if the authorities in both countries cooperate, and even if 419 scams are crimes in both jurisdictions (they are in Nigeria, but aren't in, for example, Cameroon), and even if there is an extradition treaty in place between the two nations, and even if the extradition treaty in place covers cybercrime (many don't), the resources necessary to pursue these crimes simultaneously in both jurisdictions are prohibitive. And that even assumes that the source country can be easily identified. In many cases, the bank con's bank account, e-mail account, and web traffic may all indicate different source countries.

This is simply one example of how the Internet has made life for law enforcement much more difficult. Thanks to the Internet, commerce and communication are truly global ... and so is fraud.

Luckily, we needn't worry about our poor wayward Nigerian astronaut. It turns out that there's actually a treaty for dealing with him. The Rescue Agreement, a UN-negotiated space treaty, provides an obligation for states to help astronauts in distress if they are able. During the Shuttle era, it was actually U.S. policy to train astronauts for rescue missions. The details are somewhat squishy (as is usually the case in international law), but there is little chance of an astronaut being stuck aboard a space station for two decades without someone flying close enough to help.