“在线预付款骗局”是谁发明的？
Who Made That Nigerian Scam?

The Nigerian scam may seem like a scourge of the Internet age, but it actually predates email. Before we started getting all-caps proposals in our inboxes, con men in West Africa plied their trade by fax and paper letter. Some of the first scams to make their way to Western Europe arrived by telex in 1989 and 1990, when businessmen in Britain started hearing that a wayward tanker of Nigerian crude could have its cargo claimed for bargain prices — in exchange, of course, for some cash upfront. Before then, Nigerian fraudsters aimed their grifts at locals. One scheme was the “wash-wash,” a literal money-laundering in which the mark is shown a valise of supposed bills blackened with Vaseline and iodine and promised a cut if he pays for an expensive cleaning agent.

尼日利亚骗局看起来似乎是互联网时代的祸害，但事实上它的发生早于电子邮件。在满是大写字母的提议书开始出现在我们的收件箱里之前，西非的骗子们就已经通过传真和纸质书信来设计他们的骗局了。一些最早的骗局在1989年和1990年通过电报辗转来到西欧，那时英国的商人们开始听说有满载尼日利亚原油的油轮想要廉价出售它的货物——当然，作为交换，需要预付现金。而在那之前，尼日利亚的骗子们的诈骗目标是当地人。其中的一种方式是“洗-洗”，也就是顾名思义的洗钱骗术，其特征是使用一箱用凡士林和碘涂黑的所谓钞票，并承诺在事主购买昂贵的清洗剂后可以分得其中一份。

Advance-fee or 419 scams, known by the section of the Nigerian criminal code that outlaws fraud, took on a global character when oil prices crashed along with the national economy. A newly installed military ruler, Ibrahim Babangida, cut salaries for civil servants and the military and ended price supports for the local currency. Within three years, the country’s inflation rate was greater than 38 percent. The English-speaking, entrepreneurial class found itself with little buying power and in need of foreign money. “Some of these guys came out and started perpetrating fraud,” says Andrew Apter, an Africa historian at U.C.L.A. “They used the language and insignias and letterhead of financial offices to lure people in.”

正如在尼日利亚刑法有关诈骗的章节中所描述的那样，伴随着油价下跌与国内经济的衰退，预付款也就是所谓的419骗局正在呈现出国际化的特点。最新任命的军方统帅易卜拉欣·巴班吉达(Ibrahim Babangida)，削减了政府工作人员和军队的薪酬，并且取消了对本地货币的价格支持。不到三年时间，这个国家的通货膨胀率就超过了38％。那些说英语的企业家阶层于是意识到他们严重不足的购买力和对外币的需求。“他们中的一些人动了邪念，开始行骗，”安德鲁·爱普特(Andrew Apter)说，他是加州大学洛杉矶分校的一名非洲历史学家。“他们利用其语言、头衔，以及印有金融机构抬头的信纸作为诱饵去实施诈骗。”

“在线预付款骗局”可以被任意修改。

Apter has traced this sort of misuse of official iconography as far back as a century. When Nigeria was established as a colony under British rule in 1914, its first governor cracked down on scammers in fake uniforms who claimed to be collecting taxes on behalf of the empire. The advance-fee scam itself — whereby payments are extracted from a sucker who hopes to gain an enormous treasure — seems to have originated elsewhere. According to Robert Whitaker, a historian at the University of Texas, an earlier version of the con, known as the Spanish Swindle or the Spanish Prisoner trick, plagued Britain throughout the 19th century.

爱普特已经将这种对官方形象的滥用追溯到一个世纪之前。当1914年尼日利亚刚刚作为大英帝国的殖民地存在时，它的第一届执政者就曾经镇压过那些穿着假制服声称代表帝国收税的骗子们。预付款骗局本身——也就是从那些希望获取巨额财富的受骗者那里得到支付——似乎起源于别处。罗伯特·惠特克(Robert Whitaker)是得克萨斯大学的历史学家，据他所说，这种诈骗的早期版本，也就是所谓的西班牙骗局(Spanish Swindle)或者西班牙囚徒把戏(Spanish Prisoner Trick)，在整个19世纪都困扰着大不列颠。

These days, an address in Lagos would seem to be a red flag for prospective dupes, but it may be helpful for some scammers. In 2012, a researcher with Microsoft named Cormac Herley tried to model the con artist’s behavior and concluded that a clear tip-off — an email address in Nigeria, for example — could, by scaring off the savvier or more suspicious sorts, enable them to focus on the most gullible victims.

如今，一个来自尼日利亚的邮件地址很像是给潜在受骗者的一个警示信号，但这也可能成为其它诈骗案件的帮凶。2012年，一个叫科马克·赫利(Cormac Herley)的微软研究员试图去模拟那些骗子的行为并且得出了一个清晰的结论——譬如说，一个来自尼日利亚的邮件地址——通过吓走那些更为机敏或谨慎的人群，反而可以让骗子们专注于那些最容易上当的受害者们。

SCAMMING THE SCAMMERS

以其人之道，还治其人之身

In 2003, Mike Berry was a 41-year-old computer engineer in Manchester, England, when he started replying to Nigerian scammers over email for fun. His website, 419eater.com, provides a forum for likeminded “scam-baiters” and an archive of their most outrageous achievements.

2003年，迈克·贝里(Mike Berry)还是英国曼彻斯特一个41岁的电脑工程师，他出于好玩开始在邮件里回复尼日利亚的骗子们。他的网站419eater.com，为志同道合的“骗局捕手”们提供了论坛并且存档了他们最为惊人的成果。

After 10 years, are you still an active scam-baiter? I dabbled about five or six months ago — I like to keep my hand in. But in my heyday, it wasn’t unusual for me to have 15 or 30 scammers on the line at the same time. I’ve dealt with about 4,000 or 5,000 scammers since I started.

10年后的今天，你依然是一名活跃的骗局捕手吗？五到六个月以前我还有涉足——我想要置身其中。但是在鼎盛时期，对我来说同时对付15到30个骗子也稀松平常。从开始至今，我已经应付了4000到5000个骗子了。

It sounds like a full-time job. It’s not really that tricky, if you’re good at accounting for where everything’s going. You’ll find a lot of scammers will twig straightaway and drop you like a hot cake. . . . You may only get 10 percent who will stick with you for a decent period of time.

这看起来像是一个全职工作。如果你善于追踪事情的来龙去脉的话，其实它也并没有那么复杂。你会发现许多骗子立刻就会觉察到真相，然后离去，就好像你是个烫手山芋……很可能只会有10％的骗子会跟你纠缠相当长的时间。

So that’s your success rate — 10 percent? That’s for what we could call a decent success, either a long period of time keeping the guy busy, or what we would call a trophy. You know, like a funny picture, carvings, things like that.

那么你的成功率有多少——10％？我们称那些为当之无愧的成功，我们要么让那些骗子忙好一阵子，要么我们有可能争取到一些战利品。你知道的，比如有趣的图画、雕刻，或是类似的东西。

It sounds as if you’re even better at this than they are. I’d be able to do a really good job, I think. I haven’t for one second contemplated doing that, of course. . . . I do remember I sent a scammer a fake passport, and it was such a good fake that at the end of the scam-bait, when he realized what had happened, he sent me an email and basically admitted to everything he was trying. He said that he was quite a high-up scammer, and he offered me a deal. He would pay me $12,000 a month for 10 passports to be created. You’ve got to think of what this guy must have been earning to offer me that kind of money!

听起来似乎你比他们还要更擅长此道。我想是的，我可以做得很好。当然我从未动过一丝的念头，去做那样的事情……我记得曾经给一个骗子寄过一本假的护照，它足以乱真，以至于到了后来，在明白了怎么回事后，他发邮件给我，并且基本上承认了自己的意图。他说他是一名相当成功的骗子，并且提供给我一笔交易。他愿意每月付12000美金让我做10本护照。你不禁会想，这些人到底赚了多少钱，才开得出如此高的价钱！

本文最初发表于2014年1月5日。

翻译：赵韧