Modern Variants
Modern variants of the Spanish Prisoner include the advance-fee fraud, in particular the Nigerian money transfer fraud (or 419 scam). In the advance-fee fraud, a valuable item must be ransomed from a warehouse, crooked customs agent, or lost-baggage facility before the authorities or thieves recognize its value. In the Nigerian variation, a self-proclaimed relative of a deposed African dictator offers to transfer millions of ill-gotten dollars into the bank account of the victim in return for small initial payments to cover bribes and other expenses. More recent examples feature people sharing the same surname as the intended victim, with the scammer guessing the surname from observing patterns in e-mail addresses, or obtaining full names from harvested e-mail headers. Another variation spreads via hijacked Facebook accounts, where a message is sent to all the Facebook-friends of the victim, claiming that the victim is in a foreign country, has been robbed, and needs one of the Facebook-friends to "send money" via Western Union to pay hotel & travel bills. Of course, the scammer can go to any Western Union retail outlet, in any country, in order to claim the transferred money.
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