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Wilfred Owen

Wilfred Edward Salter Owen MC (18 March 1893 – 4 November 1918) was an English poet and soldier. He was one of the leading poets of the First World War. His war poetry on the horrors of trenches and gas warfare was much influenced by his mentor Siegfried Sassoon and stood in contrast to the public perception of war at the time and to the confidently patriotic verse written by earlier war poets such as Rupert Brooke. Among his best-known works – most of which were published posthumously – are "Dulce et Decorum est", "Insensibility", "Anthem for Doomed Youth", "Futility", "Spring Offensive" and "Strange Meeting". Owen was killed in action on 4 November 1918, a week before the war's end, at the age of 25.

Early life
Owen was born on 18 March 1893 at Plas Wilmot, a house in Weston Lane, near Oswestry in Shropshire. He was the eldest of Thomas and (Harriett) Susan Owen (née Shaw)'s four children; his siblings were Mary Millard, (William) Harold, and Colin Shaw Owen. When Wilfred was born, his parents lived in a comfortable house owned by his grandfather, Edward Shaw.

After Edward's death in January 1897, and the house's sale in March, the family lodged in the back streets of Birkenhead. There Thomas Owen temporarily worked in the town employed by a railway company. Thomas transferred to Shrewsbury in April 1897 where the family lived with Thomas' parents in Canon Street.

Thomas Owen transferred back to Birkenhead in 1898 when he became stationmaster at Woodside station. The family lived with him at three successive homes in the Tranmere district area of the town. They then moved back to Shrewsbury in 1907. Wilfred Owen was educated at the Birkenhead Institute and at Shrewsbury Technical School (later known as the Wakeman School).

Owen discovered his poetic vocation in about 1904 during a holiday spent in Cheshire. He was raised as an Anglican of the evangelical type, and in his youth was a devout believer, in part thanks to his strong relationship with his mother, which lasted throughout his life. His early influences included the Bible and the Romantic poets, particularly Wordsworth and John Keats.

Owen's last two years of formal education saw him as a pupil-teacher at the Wyle Cop school in Shrewsbury. In 1911 he passed the matriculation exam for the University of London, but not with the first-class honours needed for a scholarship, which in his family's circumstances was the only way he could have afforded to attend.

In return for free lodging, and some tuition for the entrance exam (this has been questioned) Owen worked as lay assistant to the Vicar of Dunsden near Reading, living in the vicarage from September 1911 to February 1913. During this time he attended classes at University College, Reading (now the University of Reading), in botany and later, at the urging of the head of the English Department, took free lessons in Old English. His time spent at Dunsden parish led him to disillusionment with the Church, both in its ceremony and its failure to provide aid for those in need.

From 1913 he worked as a private tutor teaching English and French at the Berlitz School of Languages in Bordeaux, France, and later with a family. There he met the older French poet Laurent Tailhade, with whom he later corresponded in French. When war broke out, Owen did not rush to enlist – and even considered joining the French army – but eventually returned to England.

War service
On 21 October 1915, he enlisted in the Artists Rifles. For the next seven months, he trained at Hare Hall Camp in Essex. On 4 June 1916, he was commissioned as a second lieutenant (on probation) in the Manchester Regiment. Initially Owen held his troops in contempt for their loutish behaviour, and in a letter to his mother described his company as "expressionless lumps". However, his imaginative existence was to be changed dramatically by a number of traumatic experiences. He fell into a shell hole and suffered concussion; he was caught in the blast of a trench mortar shell and spent several days unconscious on an embankment lying amongst the remains of one of his fellow officers. Soon afterward, Owen was diagnosed with neurasthenia or shell shock and sent to Craiglockhart War Hospital in Edinburgh for treatment. It was while recuperating at Craiglockhart that he met fellow poet Siegfried Sassoon, an encounter that was to transform Owen's life.

Whilst at Craiglockhart he made friends in Edinburgh's artistic and literary circles, and did some teaching at the Tynecastle High School, in a poor area of the city. In November he was discharged from Craiglockhart, judged fit for light regimental duties. He spent a contented and fruitful winter in Scarborough, North Yorkshire, and in March 1918 was posted to the Northern Command Depot at Ripon. While in Ripon he composed or revised a number of poems, including "Futility" and "Strange Meeting". His 25th birthday was spent quietly at Ripon Cathedral, which is dedicated to his namesake, St. Wilfrid of Hexham.

Owen returned in July 1918, to active service in France, although he might have stayed on home-duty indefinitely. His decision to return was probably the result of Sassoon's being sent back to England, after being shot in the head in an apparent "friendly fire" incident, and put on sick-leave for the remaining duration of the war. Owen saw it as his duty to add his voice to that of Sassoon, that the horrific realities of the war might continue to be told. Sassoon was violently opposed to the idea of Owen returning to the trenches, threatening to "stab [him] in the leg" if he tried it. Aware of his attitude, Owen did not inform him of his action until he was once again in France.

At the very end of August 1918, Owen returned to the front line – perhaps imitating Sassoon's example. On 1 October 1918, Owen led units of the Second Manchesters to storm a number of enemy strong points near the village of Joncourt. For his courage and leadership in the Joncourt action, he was awarded the Military Cross, an award he had always sought in order to justify himself as a war poet, but the award was not gazetted until 15 February 1919. The citation followed on 30 July 1919:

"2nd Lt, Wilfred Edward Salter Owen, 5th Bn. Manch. R., T.F., attd. 2nd Bn. For conspicuous gallantry and devotion to duty in the attack on the Fonsomme Line on October 1st/2nd, 1918. On the company commander becoming a casualty, he assumed command and showed fine leadership and resisted a heavy counter-attack. He personally manipulated a captured enemy machine gun from an isolated position and inflicted considerable losses on the enemy. Throughout he behaved most gallantly."

Death
Owen was killed in action on 4 November 1918 during the crossing of the Sambre–Oise Canal, exactly one week (almost to the hour) before the signing of the Armistice which ended the war, and was promoted to the rank of Lieutenant the day after his death. His mother received the telegram informing her of his death on Armistice Day, as the church bells in Shrewsbury were ringing out in celebration. Owen is buried at Ors Communal Cemetery, Ors, in northern France. The inscription on his gravestone, chosen by his mother Susan, is a quotation from his poetry: "SHALL LIFE RENEW THESE BODIES? OF A TRUTH ALL DEATH WILL HE ANNUL" W.O.

Poetry
Owen is regarded by many as the greatest poet of the First World War, known for his verse about the horrors of trench and gas warfare. He had been writing poetry for some years before the war, himself dating his poetic beginnings to a stay at Broxton by the Hill when he was ten years old.

The poetry of William Butler Yeats was a significant influence for Owen, but Yeats did not reciprocate Owen's admiration, excluding him from The Oxford Book of Modern Verse, a decision Yeats later defended, saying Owen was "all blood, dirt, and sucked sugar stick" and "unworthy of the poet's corner of a country newspaper". Yeats elaborated: "In all the great tragedies, tragedy is a joy to the man who dies ... If war is necessary in our time and place, it is best to forget its suffering as we do the discomfort of fever ..."

The Romantic poets Keats and Shelley influenced much of his early writing and poetry. His great friend, the poet Siegfried Sassoon, later had a profound effect on his poetic voice, and Owen's most famous poems ("Dulce et Decorum est" and "Anthem for Doomed Youth") show direct results of Sassoon's influence. Manuscript copies of the poems survive, annotated in Sassoon's handwriting. Owen's poetry would eventually be more widely acclaimed than that of his mentor. While his use of pararhyme with heavy reliance on assonance was innovative, he was not the only poet at the time to use these particular techniques. He was, however, one of the first to experiment with it extensively.

His poetry itself underwent significant changes in 1917. As a part of his therapy at Craiglockhart, Owen's doctor, Arthur Brock, encouraged Owen to translate his experiences, specifically the experiences he relived in his dreams, into poetry. Sassoon, who was becoming influenced by Freudian psychoanalysis, aided him here, showing Owen through example what poetry could do. Sassoon's use of satire influenced Owen, who tried his hand at writing "in Sassoon's style". Further, the content of Owen's verse was undeniably changed by his work with Sassoon. Sassoon's emphasis on realism and "writing from experience" was contrary to Owen's hitherto romantic-influenced style, as seen in his earlier sonnets. Owen was to take both Sassoon's gritty realism and his own romantic notions and create a poetic synthesis that was both potent and sympathetic, as summarised by his famous phrase "the pity of war". In this way, Owen's poetry is quite distinctive, and he is, by many, considered a greater poet than Sassoon. Nonetheless, Sassoon contributed to Owen's popularity by his strong promotion of his poetry, both before and after Owen's death, and his editing was instrumental in the making of Owen as a poet.

Owen's poems had the benefit of strong patronage, and it was a combination of Sassoon's influence, support from Edith Sitwell, and the preparation of a new and fuller edition of the poems in 1931 by Edmund Blunden that ensured his popularity, coupled with a revival of interest in his poetry in the 1960s which plucked him out of a relatively exclusive readership into the public eye. Though he had plans for a volume of verse, for which he had written a "Preface", he never saw his own work published apart from those poems he included in The Hydra, the magazine he edited at Craiglockhart War Hospital, and "Miners", which was published in The Nation.

There were many other influences on Owen's poetry, including his mother. His letters to her provide an insight into Owen's life at the front, and the development of his philosophy regarding the war. Graphic details of the horror Owen witnessed were never spared. Owen's experiences with religion also heavily influenced his poetry, notably in poems such as "Anthem for Doomed Youth", in which the ceremony of a funeral is re-enacted not in a church, but on the battlefield itself, and "At a Calvary near the Ancre", which comments on the Crucifixion of Christ. Owen's experiences in war led him further to challenge his religious beliefs, claiming in his poem "Exposure" that "love of God seems dying".

Only five of Owen's poems were published before his death, one in fragmentary form. His best known poems include "Anthem for Doomed Youth", "Futility", "Dulce Et Decorum Est", "The Parable of the Old Men and the Young" and "Strange Meeting". However, most of them were published posthumously: Poems (1920), The Poems of Wilfred Owen (1931), The Collected Poems of Wilfred Owen (1963), The Complete Poems and Fragments (1983); fundamental in this last collection is the poem Soldier's Dream, that deals with Owen's conception of war.

Owen's full unexpurgated opus is in the academic two-volume work The Complete Poems and Fragments (1994) by Jon Stallworthy. Many of his poems have never been published in popular form.

In 1975 Mrs. Harold Owen, Wilfred's sister-in-law, donated all of the manuscripts, photographs and letters which her late husband had owned to the University of Oxford's English Faculty Library. As well as the personal artifacts, this also includes all of Owen's personal library and an almost complete set of The Hydra – the magazine of Craiglockhart War Hospital. These can be accessed by any member of the public on application in advance to the English Faculty librarian.

The Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center at the University of Texas at Austin holds a large collection of Owen's family correspondence.

Sexuality
Though it has been suggested that Owen hoped to marry Albertina Dauthieu, at the time living in Milnathort, Scotland, had he survived the war, Robert Graves and Sacheverell Sitwell, both of whom knew him, believed that Owen was homosexual, and that homoeroticism was a central element in much of his poetry. Through Sassoon, Owen was introduced to a sophisticated homosexual literary circle which included Oscar Wilde's friend Robbie Ross, writer and poet Osbert Sitwell, and Scottish writer C. K. Scott Moncrieff, the translator of Marcel Proust. This contact, it is argued, broadened Owen's outlook, and increased his confidence in incorporating homoerotic elements into his work. Historians have debated whether Owen had an affair with Scott Moncrieff in May 1918; the latter had dedicated various works to a "Mr W.O.", but Owen never responded.

Throughout Owen's lifetime and for decades after, homosexual activity between men was a punishable offence throughout the United Kingdom, and the account of Owen's sexual development has been somewhat obscured because his brother Harold removed what he considered discreditable passages in Owen's letters and diaries after the death of their mother. Andrew Motion wrote of Owen's relationship with Sassoon: "On the one hand, Sassoon's wealth, posh connections and aristocratic manner appealed to the snob in Owen: on the other, Sassoon's homosexuality admitted Owen to a style of living and thinking that he found naturally sympathetic." Sassoon, by his own account, was not actively homosexual at this time, but began his first love affair just after the war ended, in November 1918.

An important turning point in Owen scholarship occurred in 1987 when the New Statesman published the polemic "The Truth Untold" by Jonathan Cutbill, the literary executor of Edward Carpenter, which attacked the academic suppression of Owen as a poet of homosexual experience. Amongst the article's contentions was that the poem "Shadwell Stair", previously alleged to be mysterious, was a straightforward elegy to homosexual soliciting in an area of the London docks once renowned for it. In June 2022 the poem was included in the anthology, "100 Queer Poems", compiled by Andrew McMillan and Mary Jean Chan.

Relationship with Sassoon
Owen held Siegfried Sassoon in an esteem not far from hero-worship, remarking to his mother that he was "not worthy to light [Sassoon's] pipe". The relationship clearly had a profound impact on Owen, who wrote in his first letter to Sassoon after leaving Craiglockhart "You have fixed my life – however short". Sassoon wrote that he took "an instinctive liking to him", and recalled their time together "with affection". On the evening of 3 November 1917 they parted, Owen having been discharged from Craiglockhart. He was stationed on home-duty in Scarborough for several months, during which time he associated with members of the artistic circle into which Sassoon had introduced him, which included Robbie Ross and Robert Graves. He also met H. G. Wells and Arnold Bennett, and it was during this period he developed the stylistic voice for which he is now recognised. Many of his early poems were penned while stationed at the Clarence Garden Hotel, now the Clifton Hotel, in Scarborough's North Bay. A blue plaque on the hotel marks its association with Owen.

Sassoon and Owen kept in touch through correspondence, and after Sassoon was shot in the head in July 1918 and sent back to the UK to recover, they met in August and spent what Sassoon described as "the whole of a hot cloudless afternoon together." They never saw each other again. About three weeks later, Owen wrote to bid Sassoon farewell, as he was on the way back to France, and they continued to communicate. After the Armistice, Sassoon waited in vain for word from Owen, only to be told of his death several months later. The loss grieved Sassoon greatly, and he was never "able to accept that disappearance philosophically." Many years later, he is said, snobbishly, to have told Stephen Spender that he found Owen's grammar school accent "embarrassing". However, in his own account of his friendship with Owen, which appeared in his 1945 autobiography, Siegfried's Journey, Sassoon writes that Owen's death created "a chasm in my private existence", Sassoon expressed regret at what he regarded as his "slowness in discovering that [Owen] was to be of high significance for me, both as a poet and friend...and there was much comfort in his companionship".

Memorials
There are memorials to Owen at Gailly near Sailly-Laurette, Ors Communal Cemetery, near St Oswalds Church in Oswestry, Birkenhead Central Library and Shrewsbury Abbey.

On 11 November 1985, Owen was one of sixteen Great War poets commemorated on a slate stone unveiled in Westminster Abbey's Poet's Corner. The inscription on the stone is taken from Owen's "Preface" to his poems: "My subject is War, and the pity of War. The Poetry is in the pity." There is also a small museum at the Craiglockhart War Hospital, now a Napier University building, containing the "War Poets Collection".

The forester's house in Ors where Owen spent his last night, Maison Forestière de l'Ermitage, has been transformed by Turner Prize nominee Simon Patterson into an art installation and permanent memorial to Owen and his poetry. It opened to the public on 1 October 2011.

In November 2015, actor Jason Isaacs unveiled a tribute to Owen at the former Craiglockhart War Hospital in Edinburgh where Owen was treated for shell shock during WWI.

Wilfred Owen Association
To commemorate Wilfred's life and poetry, The Wilfred Owen Association was formed in 1989. Since its formation the Association has established permanent public memorials in Shrewsbury and Oswestry. In addition to readings, talks, visits and performances, it promotes and encourages exhibitions, conferences, awareness and appreciation of Owen's poetry. Peter Owen, Wilfred Owen's nephew, was President of the Association until his death in July 2018. The Association's Patrons, listed in the same order as on the Association's website, are Peter Florence, Helen McPhail, Philip Guest, Dr Rowan Williams (Archbishop of Canterbury 2002–2012) and Sir Daniel Day-Lewis; Grey Ruthven, 2nd Earl of Gowrie (1939–2021) was also a Patron. The Association presents a biennial Poetry Award to honour a poet for a sustained body of work that includes memorable war poems; previous recipients include Sir Andrew Motion (Poet Laureate 1999–2009), Dannie Abse, Christopher Logue, Gillian Clarke and Seamus Heaney. Owen Sheers was awarded the prize in September 2018.

Media portrayals

 * Not About Heroes, 1982 play by Stephen MacDonald about friendship between Owen and Sassoon
 * Regeneration Trilogy, novel series by Pat Barker that describes the meeting and relationship between Sassoon and Owen and the death of Owen, and its 1997 film adaptation
 * Wilfred Owen: A Remembrance Tale, 2007 documentary with Owen played by Samuel Barnett
 * Bullets and Daffodils, 2010 musical about Owen's life by Dean Johnson
 * "The Piper", 2016 episode of podcast series The Magnus Archives
 * The Burying Party, 2018 film with Owen played by Matthew Staite
 * Benediction, 2021 film directed by Terence Davies with Owen played by Matthew Tennyson

title: Wilfred Owen


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Advance-fee scam

An advance-fee scam is a form of fraud and is one of the most common types of confidence tricks. The scam typically involves promising the victim a significant share of a large sum of money, in return for a small up-front payment, which the fraudster claims will be used to obtain the large sum. If a victim makes the payment, the fraudster either invents a series of further fees for the victim to pay or simply disappears.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) states that "An advance fee scheme occurs when the victim pays money to someone in anticipation of receiving something of greater value – such as a loan, contract, investment, or gift - and then receives little or nothing in return." There are many variations of this type of scam, including the Nigerian prince scam, also known as a 419 scam. The number "419" refers to the section of the Nigerian Criminal Code dealing with fraud and the charges and penalties for such offenders. The scam has been used with fax and traditional mail and is now prevalent in online communications such as emails. Other variations include the Spanish Prisoner scam and the black money scam.

Although Nigeria is most often the nation referred to in these scams, they mainly originate in other nations. Other nations known to have a high incidence of advance-fee fraud include Ivory Coast, Togo, South Africa, the Netherlands, Spain, and Jamaica.

History
The modern scam is similar to the Spanish Prisoner scam that dates back to the late 18th century. In that con, businessmen were contacted by an individual allegedly trying to smuggle someone who is connected to a wealthy family out of a prison in Spain. In exchange for assistance, the scammer promised to share money with the victim in exchange for a small amount of money to bribe prison guards.

One variant of the scam may date back to the 18th or 19th century, as a very similar letter, entitled "The Letter from Jerusalem". This is illustrated in the memoirs of Eugène François Vidocq, a former French criminal and private investigator. Another variant of the scam, dating back to ca. 1830, appears very similar to emails today: "Sir, you will doubtlessly be astonished to be receiving a letter from a person unknown to you, who is about to ask a favour from you..." and goes on to talk of a casket containing 16,000 francs in gold and the diamonds of a late marchioness.

The modern-day transnational scam can be traced back to Germany in 1922 and became popular during the 1980s. There are many variants of the template letter. One of these, sent via postal mail, was addressed to a woman's husband to inquire about his health. It then asked what to do with profits from a $24.6 million investment and ended with a telephone number.

Other official-looking letters were sent from a writer who said he was a director of the state-owned Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation. He said he wanted to transfer $20 million to the recipient's bank account—money that was budgeted but was never spent. In exchange for transferring the funds out of Nigeria, the recipient would keep 30% of the total. To get the process started, the scammer asked for a few sheets of the company's letterhead, bank account numbers, and other personal information. Yet other variants have involved mention of a Nigerian prince or other member of a royal family seeking to transfer large sums of money out of the country—thus, these scams are sometimes called "Nigerian Prince emails".

The spread of e-mail and email harvesting software significantly lowered the cost of sending scam letters by using the Internet in lieu of international post. Nigeria is most often the nation referred to in these scams, they may originate in other nations as well. For example, in 2007, the head of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission stated that scam emails more frequently originated in African countries or in Eastern Europe. Within the European Union, there is a high incidence of advance-fee fraud in the Netherlands and Spain.

The emails sent invariably feature a large number of implausible claims, as well as numerous spelling and grammatical mistakes. According to Cormac Herley, a Microsoft researcher, "By sending an email that repels all but the most gullible, the scammer gets the most promising marks to self-select." Responding to Herley, a director at Nigeria's National Security Adviser said that there are more non-Nigerian scammers claiming to be Nigerian, and suggested that Nigeria's reputation for corruption is part of the allure that makes scams seem more plausible. Nigeria has a reputation for being at the center of email scammers.

Modern variations include “sugar daddy/sugar momma” schemes, some of which involve advance-fee scamming, and money flipping, whereby the mark is promised a large amount of money in exchange for sending a small amount of money.

A 2018 study of Nigerian hip-hop culture found that glamorization of cyber-fraud is prevalent in such music. Some scammers have accomplices in the United States and abroad who move in to finish the deal once the initial contact has been made.

Motives
Many scammers tend to come from poorer and more-educated backgrounds, where Internet access and better education, along with inability to afford basic necessities, drive people into committing online fraud. They were also influenced by social media celebrities and artists who promote scamming as a "cool" trend to quickly gain access to luxury items like sports cars and fashion.

In the case of Nigeria, the rise in scamming cases was due to a boom in cybercafes, a series of economic crashes from the 1980s, and the resulting joblessness among young people in Nigeria.

Implementation
This scam usually begins with the perpetrator contacting the victim via email, instant messaging, or social media using a fake email address or a fake social media account. The fraudster then makes an offer that would allegedly result in a large payoff for the victim. An email subject line may say something like "From the desk of barrister [ Name ] ", "Your assistance is needed", "Important", "Dear Sir or Madam" and so on. The details vary, but the usual story is that a person, often a government or bank employee, knows of a large amount of unclaimed money or gold that they cannot access directly, usually because they have no right to it.

Such people, who may be real people being impersonated by the scammer or fictitious characters played by the con artist, could include, for example, the wife or son of a deposed African leader who has amassed a stolen fortune, a bank employee who knows of a terminally ill wealthy person with no relatives or a wealthy foreigner who deposited money in the bank just before dying in a traffic accident or a plane crash (leaving no will or known next of kin), a US soldier who has stumbled upon a hidden cache of gold in Iraq, a business being audited by the government, a disgruntled worker or corrupt government official who has embezzled funds, a refugee, and similar characters.

The money could be in the form of gold bullion, gold dust, money in a bank account, blood diamonds, a series of cheques or bank drafts, so on and so forth. The sums involved are usually in the millions of dollars, and the investor is promised a large share, typically ten to fifty percent, in return for assisting the fraudster to retrieve or expatriate the money. Although the vast majority of recipients do not respond to these emails, a small percentage do, enough to make the scam worthwhile as many millions of messages can be sent daily.

To help persuade the victim to agree to the deal, the scammer often sends one or more false documents that bear official government stamps, and seals. 419 scammers also often utilize fake websites and addresses to present themselves as more legitimate. Multiple "people" may write or be involved in schemes as they continue, but they are often fictitious; in many cases, one person controls all the fictitious personae used in scams.

Once the victim's confidence has been gained, the scammer then introduces a delay or monetary hurdle that prevents the deal from occurring as planned, such as "To transmit the money, we need to bribe a bank official. Could you help us with a loan?" or "For you to be a party to the transaction, you must have holdings at a Nigerian bank of $100,000 or more" or similar. This is the money being stolen from the victim; the victim willingly transfers the money, usually through some irreversible channel such as a wire transfer, and the scammer receives and pockets it.

Often but not always, delays and additional costs are added by the fraudster, always keeping the promise of an imminent large transfer alive, convincing the victim that the money the victim is currently paying would be covered several times over by the payoff. The implication that these payments will be used for white-collar crime, such as bribery, and even that the money they are being promised is being stolen from a government or royal/wealthy family, often prevents the victim from telling others about the "transaction", as it would involve admitting that they intended to be complicit in an international crime.

Sometimes psychological pressure is added by claiming that the scammers' side, to pay certain fees, had to sell belongings and mortgage a house or by comparing the salary scale and living conditions in their country to those in the West. Much of the time, however, the needed psychological pressure is self-applied: once the victims have provided money toward the payoff, they feel they have a vested interest in seeing the "deal" through. Some victims even believe they can cheat the other party, and walk away with all the money instead of just the percentage they were promised.

The essential fact in all advance-fee fraud operations is the promised money transfer to the victim never happens because the money does not exist. The perpetrators rely on the fact that, by the time the victim realizes this (often only after being confronted by a third party who has noticed the transactions or conversation and recognized the scam), the victim may have sent thousands of dollars of their own money. Sometimes thousands more that has been borrowed or stolen to the scammer via an untraceable and/or irreversible means such as wire transfer. The scammer disappears, and the victim is left on the hook for the money sent to the scammer.

During the course of many schemes, scammers ask victims to supply bank account information. Usually this is a "test" devised by the scammer to gauge the victim's gullibility; the bank account information is not used directly by the scammer, because a fraudulent withdrawal from the account is more easily detected, reversed, and traced. Scammers instead usually request that payments be made using a wire transfer service like Western Union and MoneyGram. The reason given by the scammer usually relates to the speed at which the payment can be received and processed, allowing quick release of the supposed payoff. The real reason for using such money-sending services is that such wire transfers are irreversible and often untraceable. Further, these services are ideal because identification beyond knowledge of the details of the transaction is often not required, making receipt of such funds almost or entirely completely anonymous. However, bank account information obtained by scammers is sometimes sold in bulk to other fraudsters who wait a few months for the victim to repair the damage caused by the initial scam before raiding any accounts that the victim did not close.

Telephone numbers used by scammers tend to come from burner phones. In Ivory Coast, a scammer may purchase an inexpensive mobile phone and a pre-paid SIM card without submitting any identifying information. If the scammers believe they are being traced, they discard their mobile phones and purchase new ones.

The spam emails used in these scams are often sent from Internet cafés equipped with satellite internet connection. Recipient addresses and email content are copied and pasted into a webmail interface using a stand-alone storage medium, such as a memory card. Certain areas of Lagos, such as Festac Town, contain many cyber cafés that serve scammers; cyber cafés often lock their doors during e.g. 10:30pm to 7:00am, so that scammers inside may work without fear of discovery.

Nigeria also contains many businesses that provide false documents used in scams. After a scam involving a forged signature of Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo in summer 2005, Nigerian authorities raided a market in the Oluwole section of Lagos. There, police seized thousands of Nigerian and non-Nigerian passports, 10,000 blank British Airways boarding passes, 10,000 United States Postal money orders, customs documents, false university certificates, 500 printing plates, and 500 computers.

The "success rate" of the scammers is also hard to gauge, since they are operating illegally and do not keep track of specific numbers. One individual estimated he sent 500 emails per day and received about seven replies, citing that when he received a reply, he was 70 percent certain he would get the money. If tens of thousands of emails are sent every day by thousands of individuals, it doesn't take a very high success rate to be worthwhile.

The success of advance fee crimes is based on the initial persuading of the victim. The FBI recently reported that in 2019 there were 14,607 US citizens that were victims of advance fee scams. The complaints that they received totaled in losses of more than $3.5 billion.

Countermeasures
In recent years, efforts have been made by governments, internet companies, and individuals to combat scammers involved in advance-fee fraud and 419 scams. In 2004, the Nigerian government formed the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) to combat economic and financial crimes, such as advanced-fee fraud. In 2009, Nigeria's EFCC announced that they have adopted smart technology developed by Microsoft to track down fraudulent emails. They hoped to have the service, dubbed "Eagle Claw", running at full capacity to warn a quarter of a million potential victims.

Some individuals participate in a practice known as scam baiting, in which they pose as potential targets and engage the scammers in lengthy dialogue so as to waste the scammer's time and decrease the time they have available for actual victims. Likewise, Artists Against 419, was set-up by volunteers and offers a public database with information on scam websites. They work closely together with APWG to share their data with financial institutions and cybersecurity companies.

Irreversible money transfers
A central element of advance-fee fraud is that the transaction from the victim to the scammer must be untraceable and irreversible. Otherwise, the victim, once they become aware of the scam, could successfully retrieve their money and alert officials who could track the accounts used by the scammer.

Wire transfers via Western Union and MoneyGram are ideal for this purpose. International wire transfers cannot be cancelled or reversed, and the person receiving the money cannot be tracked. Other non-cancellable forms of payment include postal money orders and cashier's cheques, but wire transfer via Western Union or MoneyGram is more common.

Anonymous communication
Since the scammer's operations must be untraceable to avoid identification, and because the scammer is often impersonating someone else, any communication between the scammer and his victim must be done through channels that hide the scammer's true identity. The following options in particular are widely used.

Web-based email
Because many free email services do not require valid identifying information and also allow communication with many victims in a short span of time, they are the preferred method of communication for scammers. Some services go so far as to mask the sender's source IP address (Gmail being a common choice), making the scammer's country of origin more difficult to trace. While Gmail does indeed strip headers from emails, it is possible to trace an IP address from such an email. Scammers can create as many accounts as they wish and often have several at a time. In addition, if email providers are alerted to the scammer's activities and suspend the account, it is a trivial matter for the scammer to simply create a new account to resume scamming.

Email hijacking/friend scams
Some fraudsters hijack existing email accounts and use them for advance-fee fraud purposes. For instance, with social engineering, the fraudster impersonates associates, friends, or family members of the legitimate account owner in an attempt to defraud them. A variety of techniques such as phishing, keyloggers, and computer viruses are used to gain login information for the email address.

Fax transmissions
Facsimile machines are commonly used tools of business whenever a client requires a hard copy of a document. They can also be simulated using web services and made untraceable by the use of prepaid phones connected to mobile fax machines or by use of a public fax machine such as one owned by a document processing business like FedEx Office/Kinko's. Thus, scammers posing as business entities often use fax transmissions as an anonymous form of communication. This is more expensive, as the prepaid phone and fax equipment cost more than email, but to a skeptical victim, it can be more believable.

SMS messages
Abusing SMS bulk senders such as WASPs, scammers subscribe to these services using fraudulent registration details and paying either via cash or with stolen credit card details. They then send out masses of unsolicited SMS messages to victims stating they have won a competition, lottery, reward, or an event and that they have to contact somebody to claim their prize. Typically the details of the party to be contacted will be an equally untraceable email address or a virtual telephone number.

These messages may be sent over a weekend when the staff at the service providers are not working, enabling the scammer to be able to abuse the services for a whole weekend. Even when traceable, they give out long and winding procedures for procuring the reward (real or unreal) and that too with the impending huge cost of transportation and tax or duty charges. The origin of such SMS messages is often from fake websites/addresses.

A contemporary (mid-2011) innovation is the use of a Premium Rate 'call back' number (instead of a website or email) in the SMS. On calling the number, the victim is first reassured that 'they are a winner' and then subjected to a long series of instructions on how to collect their 'winnings'. During the message, there will be frequent instructions to 'ring back in the event of problems'. The call is always 'cut off' just before the victim has the chance to note all the details. Some victims call back multiple times in an effort to collect all the details. The scammer thus makes their money out of the fees charged for the calls.

Telecommunications relay services
Many scams use telephone calls to convince the victim that the person on the other end of the deal is a real, truthful person. The scammer, possibly impersonating a person of a nationality or gender other than their own, would arouse suspicion by telephoning the victim. In these cases, scammers use TRS, a US federally funded relay service where an operator or a text/speech translation program acts as an intermediary between someone using an ordinary telephone and a deaf caller using TDD or other teleprinter device. The scammer may claim they are deaf, and that they must use a relay service. The victim, possibly drawn in by sympathy for a disabled caller, might be more susceptible to the fraud.

FCC regulations and confidentiality laws require operators to relay calls verbatim and adhere to a strict code of confidentiality and ethics. Thus, no relay operator may judge the legality and legitimacy of a relay call and must relay it without interference. This means the relay operator may not warn victims, even when they suspect the call is a scam. MCI said about one percent of their IP Relay calls in 2004 were scams.

Tracking phone-based relay services is relatively easy, so scammers tend to prefer Internet Protocol-based relay services such as IP Relay. In a common strategy, they bind their overseas IP address to a router or server located on US soil, allowing them to use US-based relay service providers without interference.

TRS is sometimes used to relay credit card information to make a fraudulent purchase with a stolen credit card. In many cases however, it is simply a means for the con artist to further lure the victim into the scam.

Invitation to visit the country
Sometimes, victims are invited to a country to meet government officials, an associate of the scammer, or the scammer themselves. Some victims who travel are instead held for ransom. Scammers may tell a victim that they do not need a visa or that the scammers will provide one. If the victim does this, the scammers have the power to extort money from the victim.

Sometimes victims are ransomed, kidnapped, or murdered. According to a 1995 U.S. State Department report, over fifteen persons were murdered between 1992 and 1995 in Nigeria after following through on advance-fee frauds. In 1999 Norwegian millionaire Kjetil Moe was lured to South Africa by scammers and was murdered. George Makronalli was lured to South Africa and was killed in 2004.

Variants
There are many variations on the most common stories, and also many variations on the way the scam works. Some of the more commonly seen variants involve employment scams, lottery scams, online sales and rentals, and romance scams. Many scams involve online sales, such as those advertised on websites such as Craigslist and eBay, or property rental. This article cannot list every known and future type of advanced fee fraud or 419 scheme; only some major types are described. Additional examples may be available in the external links section at the end of this article.

Employment scams
This scam targets people who have posted their résumés on e.g. job sites. The scammer sends a letter with a falsified company logo. The job offer usually indicates exceptional salary and benefits, and requests that the victim needs a "work permit" for working in the country, and includes the address of a (fake) "government official" to contact. The "government official" then proceeds to fleece the victim by extracting fees from the unsuspecting user for the work permit and other fees. A variant of the job scam recruits freelancers seeking work, such as editing or translation, then requires some advance payment before assignments are offered.

Many legitimate (or at least fully registered) companies work on a similar basis, using this method as their primary source of earnings. Some modelling and escort agencies tell applicants that they have a number of clients lined up, but that they require some sort of prior "registration fee", usually paid in by an untraceable method, e.g. by Western Union transfer; once the fee is paid, the applicant is informed the client has cancelled, and not contacted again.

The scammer contacts the victim to interest them in a "work-from-home" opportunity, or asks them to cash a cheque or money order that for some reason cannot be redeemed locally. In one cover story, the perpetrator of the scam wishes the victim to work as a "mystery shopper", evaluating the service provided by MoneyGram or Western Union locations within major retailers such as Wal-Mart. The scammer sends the victim a forged or stolen cheque or money order as described above, the victim deposits it—banks will often credit an account with the value of a cheque not obviously false— and sends the money to the scammer via wire transfer. Later the cheque is not honoured ("bounces") and the bank debits the victim's account. Schemes based solely on cheque cashing usually offer only a small part of the cheque's total amount, with the assurance that many more cheques will follow; if the victim buys into the scam and cashes all the cheques, the scammer can steal a lot in a very short time.

Bogus job offers
More sophisticated scams advertise jobs with real companies and offer lucrative salaries and conditions with the fraudsters pretending to be recruitment agents. A bogus telephone or online interview may take place and after some time the applicant is informed that the job is theirs. To secure the job they are instructed to send money for their work visa or travel costs to the agent, or to a bogus travel agent who works on the scammer's behalf. No matter what the variation, they always involve the job seeker sending them or their agent money, credit card or bank account details. A newer form of employment scam has arisen in which users are sent a bogus job offer, but are not asked to give financial information. Instead, their personal information is harvested during the application process and then sold to third parties for a profit, or used for identity theft.

Another form of employment scam involves making people receive a fake "interview" where they are told the benefits of the company. The attendees are then made to assist to a conference where a scammer will use elaborate manipulation techniques to convince the attendees to purchase products, in a similar manner to the catalog merchant business model, as a hiring requisite. Quite often, the company lacks any form of the physical catalog to help them sell products (e.g. jewelry). When "given" the job, the individual is then asked to promote the scam job offer on their own. They are also made to work the company unpaid as a form of "training". Similar scams involve making alleged job candidates pay money upfront in person for training materials or services, with the claim that upon successful completion, they will be offered a guaranteed job, which never materializes.

Lottery scam
The lottery scam involves fake notices of lottery wins, although the intended victim has not entered the lottery. The "winner" is usually asked to send sensitive information such as name, residential address, occupation/position, lottery number etc. to a free email account which is at times untraceable or without any link. In addition to harvesting this information, the scammer then notifies the victim that releasing the funds requires some small fee (insurance, registration, or shipping). Once the victim sends the fee, the scammer invents another fee.

The fake cheque technique described above is also used. Fake or stolen cheque, representing a part payment of the winnings, being sent; then a fee, smaller than the amount received, is requested. The bank receiving the bad cheque eventually reclaims the funds from the victim.

In 2004, a variant of the lottery scam appeared in the United States: a scammer phones a victim purporting to be speaking on behalf of the government about a grant they qualify for, subject to an advance fee of typically US$250.

Typical lottery scams address the person as some variation of Lucky Winner. This is a red flag as if someone entered an actual lottery and won, the organization would know their name, and not simply call them Lucky Winner.

Online sales and rentals
Many scams involve the purchase of goods and services via classified advertisements, especially on sites like Craigslist, eBay, or Gumtree. These typically involve the scammer contacting the seller of a particular good or service via telephone or email expressing interest in the item. They will typically then send a fake cheque written for an amount greater than the asking price, asking the seller to send the difference to an alternate address, usually by money order or Western Union. A seller eager to sell a particular product may not wait for the cheque to clear, and when the bad cheque bounces, the funds wired have already been lost.

Some scammers advertise phony academic conferences in exotic or international locations, complete with fake websites, scheduled agendas and advertising experts in a particular field that will be presenting there. They offer to pay the airfare of the participants, but not the hotel accommodations. They will extract money from the victims when they attempt to reserve their accommodations in a non-existent hotel.

Sometimes, an inexpensive rental property is advertised by a fake landlord, who is typically out of state (or the country) and asking for the rent and/or deposit to be wired to them. Or the con artist finds a property, pretends to be the owner, lists it online, and communicates with the would-be renter to make a cash deposit. The scammer may also be the renter as well, in which case they pretend to be a foreign student and contact a landlord seeking accommodation. They usually state they are not yet in the country and wish to secure accommodations prior to arriving. Once the terms are negotiated, a forged cheque is forwarded for a greater amount than negotiated, and the fraudster asks the landlord to wire some of the money back.

Pet scams
This is a variation of the online sales scam where high-value, scarce pets are advertised as bait on online advertising websites using little real seller verification like Craigslist, Gumtree, and JunkMail. The pet may either be advertised as being for-sale or up for adoption. Typically the pet is advertised on online advertising pages complete with photographs taken from various sources such as real advertisements, blogs or wherever else an image can be stolen. Upon the potential victim contacting the scammer, the scammer responds by asking for details pertaining to the potential victim's circumstances and location under the pretense of ensuring that the pet would have a suitable home.

By determining the location of the victim, the scammer ensures he is far enough from the victim so as to not allow the buyer to physically view the pet. Should the scammer be questioned, as the advertisement claimed a location initially, the scammer will claim work circumstances having forced him to relocate. This forces a situation whereby all communication is either via email, telephone (normally untraceable numbers) and SMS.

Upon the victim deciding to adopt or purchase the pet, a courier has to be used which is in reality part of the scam. If this is for an adopted pet, typically the victim is expected to pay some fee such as insurance, food or shipping. Payment is via MoneyGram, Western Union or money mules' bank accounts where other victims have been duped into work from home scams.

Numerous problems are encountered in the courier phase of the scam. The crate is too small and the victim has the option of either purchasing a crate with air conditioning or renting one while also paying a deposit, typically called a caution or cautionary fee. The victim may also have to pay for insurance if such fees have not been paid yet. If the victim pays these fees, the pet may become sick and a veterinarian's assistance is sought for which the victim has to repay the courier.

Additionally, the victim may be asked to pay for a health certificate needed to transport the pet, and for kennel fees during the recuperation period. The further the scam progresses, the more similar are the fictitious fees to those of typical 419 scams. It is not uncommon to see customs or like fees being claimed if such charges fit into the scam plot.

Numerous scam websites may be used for this scam. This scam has been linked to the classical 419 scams in that the fictitious couriers used, as are also used in other types of 419 scams such as lotto scams.

Romance scam
One of the variants is the Romance Scam, a money-for-romance angle. The con artist approaches the victim on an online dating service, an instant messenger, or a social networking site. The scammer claims an interest in the victim, and posts pictures of an attractive person. The scammer uses this communication to gain confidence, then asks for money. A very common example of romance scams is depicted in the fraudulent activities of these boys, popularly known as Yahoo boys in Nigeria.

The con artist may claim to be interested in meeting the victim but needs cash to book a plane, buy a bus ticket, rent a hotel room, pay for personal-travel costs such as gasoline or a vehicle rental, or to cover other expenses. In other cases, they claim they're trapped in a foreign country and need assistance to return, to escape imprisonment by corrupt local officials, to pay for medical expenses due to an illness contracted abroad, and so on. The scammer may also use the confidence gained by the romance angle to introduce some variant of the original Nigerian Letter scheme, such as saying they need to get money or valuables out of the country and offer to share the wealth, making the request for help in leaving the country even more attractive to the victim.

Scams often involve meeting someone on an online match-making service. The scammer initiates contact with their target who is out of the area and requests money for transportation fare. Scammers will typically ask for money to be sent via a money order or wire transfer due to the need to travel, or for medical or business costs.

An extreme example of this is the case of 67-year old Australian woman Jette Jacobs. In 2013 she traveled to South Africa to supposedly marry her scammer, Jesse Orowo Omokoh, 28, after having sent more than $90,000 to him over a three-year period. Her body was discovered on February 9, 2013, under mysterious circumstances, two days after meeting up with Omokoh, who then fled to Nigeria, where he was arrested. He was found to have had 32 fake online identities. Due to lack of evidence he was not charged with murder, but was charged with fraud.

Mobile tower installation fraud
This variant of advance-fee fraud is widespread in India and Pakistan. The fraudster uses Internet classified websites and print media to lure the public for the installation of a mobile phone tower on their property, with the promise of huge rental returns. The fraudster also creates fake websites to appear legitimate. The victims part with their money in pieces to the fraudster on account of the Government Service Tax, government clearance charges, bank charges, transportation charges, survey fee etc. The Indian government is issuing public notices in media to spread awareness among the public and warn them against mobile tower fraudsters.

Other scams
Other scams involve unclaimed property, also called "bona vacantia" in the United Kingdom. In England and Wales (other than the Duchy of Lancaster and the Duchy of Cornwall), this property is administered by the Bona Vacantia Division of the Treasury Solicitor's Department. Fraudulent emails and letters claiming to be from this department have been reported, informing the recipient they are the beneficiary of a legacy but requiring the payment of a fee before sending more information or releasing the money. In the United States, messages are falsely claimed to be from the National Association of Unclaimed Property Administrators (NAUPA), a real organization, but one that does not and cannot itself make payments.

In one variant of 419 fraud, an alleged hitman writes to someone explaining he has been targeted to kill them. He tells them he knows the allegations against them are false, and asks for money so the target can receive evidence of the person who ordered the hit.

Another variant of advanced fee fraud is known as a pigeon drop. This is a confidence trick in which the mark, or "pigeon", is persuaded to give up a sum of money in order to secure the rights to a larger sum of money, or more valuable object. In reality, the scammers make off with the money and the mark is left with nothing. In the process, the stranger (actually a confidence trickster) puts his money with the mark's money (in an envelope, briefcase, or bag) which the mark is then apparently entrusted with; it is actually switched for a bag full of newspaper or other worthless material. Through various theatrics, the mark is given the opportunity to leave with the money without the stranger realizing. In reality, the mark would be fleeing from his own money, which the con man still has (or has handed off to an accomplice).

Some scammers will go after the victims of previous scams; known as a reloading scam. For example, they may contact a victim saying they can track and apprehend the scammer and recover the money lost by the victim, for a price. Or they may say a fund has been set up by the Nigerian government to compensate victims of 419 fraud, and all that is required is proof of the loss, personal information, and a processing and handling fee. The recovery scammers obtain lists of victims by buying them from the original scammers.

Consequences
Estimates of the total losses due to the scam are uncertain and vary widely, since many people may be too embarrassed to admit that they were gullible enough to be scammed to report the crime. A United States government report in 2006 indicated that Americans lost $198.4 million to Internet fraud in 2006, averaging a loss of $5,100 per incident. That same year, a report in the United Kingdom claimed that these scams cost the economy £150 million per year, with the average victim losing £31,000. As of 2019, Nigerian letter scams still annually collect $700,000 ($ in dollars) or $2,133 ($ in  dollars) per person.

In addition to the financial cost, many victims also suffer a severe emotional and psychological cost, such as losing their ability to trust people. One man from Cambridgeshire, UK burnt himself to death with petrol after realizing that the $1.2 million "internet lottery" that he had won was actually a scam. In 2007 a Chinese student at the University of Nottingham killed herself after she discovered that she had fallen for a similar lottery scam.

Other victims lose wealth and friends, become estranged from family members, deceive partners, get divorced, or commit criminal offenses in the process of either fulfilling their "obligations" to the scammers or obtaining more money. In 2008, an Oregon woman lost $400,000 to a Nigerian advance-fee fraud scam, after an email told her she had inherited money from her long-lost grandfather. Her curiosity was piqued because she actually had a grandfather with whom her family had lost touch, and whose initials matched those given in the email. She sent hundreds of thousands of dollars over a period of more than two years, despite her family, bank staff and law enforcement officials all urging her to stop. The elderly are particularly susceptible to online scams such as this, as they typically come from a generation that was more trusting, and are often too proud to report the fraud. They also may be concerned that relatives might see it as a sign of declining mental capacity, and they are afraid to lose their independence.

Victims can be enticed to borrow or embezzle money to pay the advance fees, believing that they will shortly be paid a much larger sum and be able to refund what they misappropriated. Crimes committed by victims include credit-card fraud, check kiting, and embezzlement. San Diego-based businessman James Adler lost over $5 million in a Nigeria-based advance-fee scam. While a court affirmed that various Nigerian government officials (including a governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria) were directly or indirectly involved, and that Nigerian government officials could be sued in U.S. courts under the "commercial activity" exception to the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act, Adler was unable to get his money back due to the doctrine of unclean hands because he had knowingly entered into a contract that was illegal.

Some 419 scams involve even more serious crimes, such as kidnapping or murder. One such case, in 2008, involves Osamai Hitomi, a Japanese businessman who was lured to Johannesburg, South Africa and kidnapped on September 26, 2008. The kidnappers took him to Alberton, south of Johannesburg, and demanded a $5 million ransom from his family. Seven people were ultimately arrested. In July 2001, Joseph Raca, a former mayor of Northampton, UK, was kidnapped by scammers in Johannesburg, South Africa, who demanded a ransom of £20,000. The captors released Raca after they became nervous. One 419 scam that ended in murder occurred in February 2003, when Jiří Pasovský, a 72-year-old scam victim from the Czech Republic, shot and killed 50-year-old Michael Lekara Wayid, an official at the Nigerian embassy in Prague, and injured another person, after the Nigerian Consul General explained he could not return the $600,000 that Pasovský had lost to a Nigerian scammer.

The international nature of the crime, combined with the fact that many victims do not want to admit that they bought into an illegal activity, has made tracking down and apprehending these criminals difficult. Furthermore, the government of Nigeria has been slow to take action, leading some investigators to believe that some Nigerian government officials are involved in some of these scams. The Nigeria government's establishment of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) in 2004 helped with the issue to some degree, although issues with corruption remain.

Despite this, there have been some recent successes in apprehending and prosecuting these criminals. In 2004, fifty-two suspects were arrested in Amsterdam after an extensive raid, after which almost no 419 emails were reported being sent by local internet service providers. In November 2004, Australian authorities apprehended Nick Marinellis of Sydney, the self-proclaimed head of Australian 419ers who later boasted that he had "220 African brothers worldwide" and that he was "the Australian headquarters for those scams". In 2008 US authorities in Olympia, Washington, sentenced Edna Fiedler to two years in prison with 5 years of supervised probation for her involvement in a $1 million Nigerian cheque scam. She had an accomplice in Lagos, Nigeria, who shipped her up to $1.1 million worth of counterfeit cheques and money orders with instructions on where to ship them.

In popular culture
Research suggests that some Nigerian hip-hop musicians have strong connections with some Yahoo Boys (cybercriminals). Due to the increased use of the 419 scams on the Internet, it has been used as a plot device in many films, television shows and books. A song, "I Go Chop Your Dollar", performed by Nkem Owoh, also became internationally known as an anthem for 419 scammers using the phrases "419 is just a game, I am the winner, you are the loser". Other appearances in popular media include:
 * The 2018 film Nigerian Prince follows a Nigerian-American teenager sent to Nigeria by his mother, where he connects with his cousin Pius, who runs 419 scams for a living.
 * The 2016 short story The Nigerian Prince – When The Scammer Becomes The Scammed by L. Toshua Parker follows the true story of a U.S. college student and hacker in 2000 who targeted Nigerian 419 scammers and stole millions back from them.
 * In "A Thief in Ni-Moya", a 1981 novella from Robert Silverberg's Majipoor series, a young woman is swindled out of her savings under the pretense of fees required to inherit a large estate.
 * The novel I Do Not Come To You By Chance by Nigerian author Adaobi Tricia Nwaubani explores the phenomenon.
 * The 2006 direct-to-DVD kid flick EZ Money features an instance of this scam as its central premise.
 * In the 2007 Futurama straight-to-DVD film Bender's Big Score, Professor Farnsworth falls for a lottery scam, giving away his personal details on the Internet after believing he has won the Spanish national lottery. Later, Nixon's Head falls for a "sweepstakes" letter by the same scammers, while Zoidberg is taken by an advance-fee fraud, thinking he is next of kin to a Nigerian Prince.
 * In series 6, episode 3 of the BBC television series The Real Hustle, the hustlers demonstrated the 419 scam to the hidden cameras in the "High Stakes" episodes of the show.
 * In the HBO comedy series Flight of the Conchords episode "The New Cup", the band's manager, Murray, uses the band's emergency funds for what appears to be a 419 scam—an investment offer made by a Mr. Nigel Soladu, who had e-mailed him from Nigeria. However, it turns out that Nigel Soladu is a real Nigerian businessman and the investment offer is legitimate, although Murray notes that, despite Mr. Soladu having e-mailed many people for an investment, only he had taken him up on it. The band receives a 1000% profit, which they use to get bailed out of jail.
 * The Residents included a song called "My Nigerian Friend" in their 2008 multimedia production The Bunny Boy.
 * In the pilot episode, "The Nigerian Job", of Leverage, the group uses the reputation of the Nigerian scam to con a deceitful businessman.
 * The 2012 novel 419 by Will Ferguson is the story of a daughter looking for the persons she believes responsible for her father's death due to suicide following a 419 scam. A follow-up to earlier novels about con men and frauds (Generica and Spanish Fly), 419 won the 2012 Giller Prize, Canada's most distinguished literary award.
 * In the video game Warframe, Nef Anyo ran an advance-fee fraud during Operation False Profit, where players attempted to reverse the scam and steal credits from him in order to bankrupt him and prevent his creation of a robotic army.
 * MC Frontalot's song "Message No. 419" is about a 419 scam.
 * MC Frontalot's song "Message No. 419" is about a 419 scam.

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Advance-fee scam


text:
Human Rights Watch

Human Rights Watch (HRW) is an international non-governmental organization headquartered in New York City that conducts research and advocacy on human rights. The group pressures governments, policymakers, companies, and individual human rights abusers to denounce abuse and respect human rights, and often works on behalf of refugees, children, migrants, and political prisoners.

In 1997, Human Rights Watch shared the Nobel Peace Prize as a founding member of the International Campaign to Ban Landmines. It played a leading role in the 2008 treaty banning cluster munitions.

HRW's annual expenses totaled $50.6 million in 2011, $69.2 million in 2014, and $75.5 million in 2017.

History
Human Rights Watch was co-founded by Robert L. Bernstein, Jeri Laber, and Aryeh Neier as a private American NGO in 1978, under the name Helsinki Watch, to monitor the then-Soviet Union's compliance with the Helsinki Accords. Helsinki Watch adopted a practice of publicly "naming and shaming" abusive governments through media coverage and direct exchanges with policymakers. Helsinki Watch says that, by shining the international spotlight on human rights violations in the Soviet Union and its European partners, it contributed to the region's democratic transformations in the late 1980s.

Americas Watch was founded in 1981 while bloody civil wars engulfed Central America. Relying on extensive on-the-ground fact-finding, Americas Watch not only addressed perceived abuses by government forces but also applied international humanitarian law to investigate and expose war crimes by rebel groups. In addition to raising concerns in the affected countries, Americas Watch also examined the role played by foreign governments, particularly the United States government, in providing military and political support to abusive regimes.

Asia Watch (1985), Africa Watch (1988) and Middle East Watch (1989) were added to what was known as "The Watch Committees". In 1988, these committees united under one umbrella to form Human Rights Watch.

In April 2021, Human Rights Watch released a report accusing Israel of apartheid and calling on the International Criminal Court to investigate "systematic discrimination" against Palestinians, becoming the first major international rights NGO to do so.

In August 2020, the Chinese government sanctioned HRW executive director Kenneth Roth—along with the heads of four other U.S.-based democracy and human rights organizations and six U.S. Republican lawmakers—for supporting the Hong Kong pro-democracy movement in the 2019–20 Hong Kong protests. The five organizations' leaders saw the sanctioning, whose details were unspecified, as a tit-for-tat measure in response to the earlier U.S. sanctioning of 11 Hong Kong officials. The latter step had in turn been a reaction to the enactment of the Hong Kong National Security Law in June. In October 2021, The New York Times reported that HRW left Hong Kong as a result of the Chinese sanctions, with the situation in Hong Kong henceforth to be monitored by HRW's China team. The decision to leave came amid a wider crackdown on civil society groups in Hong Kong.

On 8 March 2023, Bahrain canceled two HRW staff members' entry permit visas to attend the 146th Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU) Assembly. The permits were issued on 30 January 2023. Holding a constant observer status with IPU, HRW authorities had a permanent access to attend the organization's assemblies. Bahrain held the IPU Meeting from 11-15 March 2023.

Profile
Pursuant to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), Human Rights Watch opposes violations of what the UDHR considers basic human rights. This includes capital punishment and discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. HRW advocates freedoms in connection with fundamental human rights, such as freedom of religion and freedom of the press. It seeks to achieve change by publicly pressuring governments and their policymakers to curb human rights abuses, and by convincing more powerful governments to use their influence on governments that violate human rights.

Human Rights Watch publishes research reports on violations of international human rights norms as set out by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and what it perceives to be other internationally accepted human-rights norms. These reports are used as the basis for drawing international attention to abuses and pressuring governments and international organizations to reform. Researchers conduct fact-finding missions to investigate suspect situations, also using diplomacy, staying in touch with victims, making files about public and individuals, providing required security for them in critical situations, and generating local and international media coverage. Issues HRW raises in its reports include social and gender discrimination, torture, military use of children, political corruption, abuses in criminal justice systems, and the legalization of abortion. HRW has documented and reported various violations of the laws of war and international humanitarian law, most recently in Yemen.

Human Rights Watch also supports writers worldwide who are persecuted for their work and in need of financial assistance. The Hellman/Hammett grants are financed by the estate of the playwright Lillian Hellman in funds set up in her name and that of her longtime companion, the novelist Dashiell Hammett. In addition to providing financial assistance, the Hellman/Hammett grants help raise international awareness of activists who have been silenced for speaking out in defence of human rights.

Each year, Human Rights Watch presents the Human Rights Defenders Award to activists who demonstrate leadership and courage in defending human rights. The award winners work closely with HRW to investigate and expose human rights abuses.

Human Rights Watch was one of six international NGOs that founded the Coalition to Stop the Use of Child Soldiers in 1998. It is also the co-chair of the International Campaign to Ban Landmines, a global coalition of civil society groups that successfully lobbied to introduce the Ottawa Treaty, which prohibits the use of anti-personnel landmines.

Human Rights Watch is a founding member of the International Freedom of Expression Exchange, a global network of non-governmental organizations that monitor censorship worldwide. It also co-founded the Cluster Munition Coalition, which brought about an international convention banning the weapons. HRW employs more than 275 staff—country experts, lawyers, journalists, and academics—and operates in more than 90 countries around the world. Headquartered in New York City, it has offices in Amsterdam, Beirut, Berlin, Brussels, Chicago, Geneva, Johannesburg, London, Los Angeles, Nairobi, Seoul, Paris, San Francisco, Sydney, Tokyo, Toronto, Washington, D.C., and Zürich. HRW maintains direct access to the majority of countries it reports on. Cuba, North Korea, Sudan, Iran, Israel, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates, Uzbekistan and Venezuela are among the handful of countries that have blocked HRW staff members' access.

HRW's former executive director is Kenneth Roth, who held the position from 1993 to 2022. Roth conducted investigations on abuses in Poland after martial law was declared 1981. He later focused on Haiti, which had just emerged from the Duvalier dictatorship but continued to be plagued with problems. Roth's awareness of the importance of human rights began with stories his father had told about escaping Nazi Germany in 1938. He graduated from Yale Law School and Brown University.

Tirana Hassan became the group's executive director in 2023. Hassan is a qualified social worker who has worked with Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), the United Nations International Children's Emergency Fund (UNICEF), Save the Children, and most recently as director of Amnesty International's Crisis Response Program. Hassan holds honors degrees in social work and law from Australia and a master's degree in international human rights law from Oxford University.

Comparison with Amnesty International
Human Rights watch and Amnesty International are both international non-governmental organizations headquartered in the North Atlantic Anglosphere that report on global human rights violations. The major differences lie in the groups' structures and methods for promoting change.

Amnesty International is a mass-membership organization. Mobilization of those members is the organization's central advocacy tool. Human Rights Watch's main products are its crisis-directed research and lengthy reports, whereas Amnesty International lobbies and writes detailed reports but also focuses on mass letter-writing campaigns, adopting individuals as "prisoners of conscience" and lobbying for their release. HRW openly lobbies for specific actions for other governments to take against human rights offenders, including naming specific individuals for arrest, or sanctions to be levied against certain countries, such as calling for punitive sanctions against the top leaders in Sudan who oversaw a killing campaign in Darfur. The group also called for human rights activists who had been detained in Sudan to be released.

HRW's documentations of human rights abuses often include extensive analyses of conflicts' political and historical backgrounds, some of which have been published in academic journals. AI's reports, on the other hand, tend to contain less analysis, instead focusing on specific abuses of rights.

In 2010, Jonathan Foreman wrote that HRW had "all but eclipsed" Amnesty International. According to Foreman, instead of being supported by a mass membership, as AI is, HRW depends on wealthy donors who like to see the organization's reports make headlines. For this reason, according to Foreman, it may be that organizations like HRW "concentrate too much on places that the media already cares about," especially Israel.

Financing and services
For the financial year ending June 2008, HRW reported receiving approximately US$44 million in public donations. In 2009, HRW said it received almost 75% of its financial support from North America, 25% from Western Europe and less than 1% from the rest of the world.

According to a 2008 financial assessment, HRW reports that it does not accept any direct or indirect funding from governments and is financed through contributions from private individuals and foundations.

Financier George Soros of the Open Society Foundations announced in 2010 his intention to grant US$100 million to HRW over ten years to help it expand its efforts internationally: "to be more effective", he said, "I think the organization has to be seen as more international, less an American organization." He continued, "Human Rights Watch is one of the most effective organizations I support. Human rights underpin our greatest aspirations: they're at the heart of open societies." The donation, the largest in HRW's history, increased its operating staff of 300 by 120 people.

Charity Navigator gave HRW a three-star rating for 2018. Its financial rating increased from three stars in 2015 to the maximum four as of 2016. The Better Business Bureau said HRW meets its standards for charity accountability.

Notable staff
Some notable current and former staff members of Human Rights Watch:

 * Robert L. Bernstein, founding chair emeritus
 * Neil Rimer, co-chair, international board of directors
 * Kenneth Roth, former executive director
 * Jan Egeland, deputy director and director of Human Rights Watch Europe
 * John Studzinski, vice chair; developed European arm; former director; member of executive committee; chairman of investment committee
 * Minky Worden, media director
 * Jamie Fellner, senior counsel for the United States Program
 * Brad Adams, Asia Director
 * Scott Long, Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Rights Director
 * Sarah Leah Whitson, former Middle East and North Africa Director
 * Joe Stork, deputy director for Middle East and North Africa
 * Marc Garlasco, former staff member, resigned due to a scandal involving his Nazi memorabilia collection
 * Sharon Hom, member of the advisory board of Human Rights Watch/Asia
 * Tae-Ung Baik, former research consultant
 * Nabeel Rajab, member of the Advisory Committee of Human Rights Watch's Middle East Division
 * Tejshree Thapa, former Senior South Asia researcher
 * Habib Rahiab, former field researcher in Afghanistan and Pakistan
 * Ben Rawlence, journalist and former researcher

Publications
Human Rights Watch publishes reports on many different topics and compiles an annual World Report presenting an overview of the worldwide state of human rights. It has been published by Seven Stories Press since 2006; the current edition, World Report 2020, was released in January 2020, and covers events of 2019. World Report 2020, HRW's 30th annual review of human rights practices around the globe, includes reviews of human rights practices and trends in nearly 100 countries, and an introductory essay by Executive Director Kenneth Roth, "China's Global Threat to Human Rights". HRW has reported extensively on subjects such as the Rwandan genocide of 1994, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and the excessive breadth of U.S. sex offender registries and their application to juveniles.

In the summer of 2004, the Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Columbia University in New York became the depository institution for the Human Rights Watch Archive, an active collection that documents decades of human rights investigations around the world. The archive was transferred from the Norlin Library at the University of Colorado, Boulder. It includes administrative files, public relations documents, and case and country files. With some exceptions for security considerations, the Columbia University community and the public have access to field notes, taped and transcribed interviews with alleged victims of human rights violations, video and audiotapes, and other materials documenting HRW's activities since its founding in 1978 as Helsinki Watch. Some parts of the HRW archive are not open to researchers or to the public, including the records of the meetings of the board of directors, the executive committee, and the various subcommittees, limiting historians' ability to understand the organization's internal decision-making.

Criticism
HRW has been criticized for perceived bias by the national governments it has investigated for human rights abuses. Some sources allege HRW is biased against Israel in its coverage of the Israel-Palestine conflict. In 2014, two Nobel Peace Laureates, Adolfo Pérez Esquivel and Mairead Maguire, wrote a letter signed by 100 other human rights activists and scholars criticizing HRW for its revolving-door hiring practices with the U.S. government, its failure to denounce the U.S. practice of extrajudicial rendition, its endorsement of the U.S. 2011 military intervention in Libya, and its silence during the 2004 Haitian coup d'état.

In 2020, HRW's board of directors discovered that HRW accepted a $470,000 donation from Saudi real estate magnate Mohamed Bin Issa Al Jaber, owner of a company HRW "had previously identified as complicit in labor rights abuse", under the condition that the donation not be used to support LGBT advocacy in the Middle East and North Africa. After The Intercept reported the donation, it was returned, and HRW issued a statement that accepting it was "deeply regrettable".

title: Human Rights Watch