FOR many years now in the Kingdom, there has been a problem with unscrupulous individuals approaching Saudi businessmen with intentions to defraud. The individuals have represented a variety of nationalities but charlatans from the African continent have been prominent. In the past, most of the deceptive propositions have arrived through facsimile, but now the cheats have gone high-tech, inundating businessmen with e-mails.
The extent of the problem has remained largely undisclosed. Most Saudi businessmen simply press the delete key and trash the mail as soon as they recognize its intent. But the charlatans are becoming more devious and once in a while, some naive person gets taken in by a scam.
While it might seem easy to just get rid of the mails as quickly as they arrive, when you’re an international businessman with contacts around the world and you start receiving many of these missives it can be time consuming to weed them out from legitimate correspondence. Banker and information technology entrepreneur, Waleed Al-Rajhi, provided Arab News with some of the fraudulent e-mails that have landed in his inbox.
"I believe that I am a target of these people because of my last name," Al-Rajhi explained. "But I have seen too many Saudis taken in by cheats to be vulnerable myself."
The e-mails have been sent to Al-Rajhi from several African nations including Nigeria, Burkino Faso and South Africa. Some were purported to be from individuals such as Dr. (Mrs.) Maryam Abacha and David Nyerere. Others were masquerading as correspondence from various banks. They all offered huge sums ranging from $18.5 million to $50 million.
"When you receive an e-mail that starts out by stating it’s from the Bank of Africa or the African Development Bank or Bank International du Burkina, you can’t immediately discount it," said Al-Rajhi. "It’s only when you get into the body of the e-mail that it becomes apparent that this is a fraudulent communication."
At first, Al-Rajhi found the mails merely annoying, but as their numbers increased he decided he had to find a way to fight back and shut the cheats down. So he began responding to the mails, acting as if he’d been taken in by the scams and enclosing a telephone number where the crooks could call to provide him with more details of their propositions. If they did call, he would keep them on the telephone as long as possible and suggest meetings in nearby countries where they could finalize the deals.
"Sometimes I could almost hear them squirming on the other end of the telephone line as I talked on and on about how we were going to get rich together," said Al-Rajhi with a laugh.
After a few extremely expensive telephone calls, all the swindlers gave up and have left Al-Rajhi in peace, at least for now.
Al-Rajhi is not alone in receiving these letters and the charlatans are becoming more sophisticated. Realizing that Saudis are not responding to their offers of easy money, they are now trying to pull the heartstrings of good Muslims instead. Below is a reprint of a portion from the latest e-mail scheme received by an Eastern Province businessman:
"Allow me to introduce myself to you, I am your Brother in Islam Abdul Baits Muchtar, a Indonesian student in Sudan, I am studying now in Master degree for Arabic language in International University of Africa, Khartoum. and also I am studying in High Diploma for Diplomatic Studies in Sudanese Ministry of External Affairs. The problem which face me is living cost in Sudan. I need about one hundred dollars monthly."
Arab News telephoned one African Embassy in Riyadh to discuss the efforts they are taking to shut down this type of illegal activity. We were put through to an officer in their commercial section who was extremely unhappy to hear from us.
He stated that rather than going public with these letters, businessmen should just fax them to the embassy of the nation from where they supposedly originated.
"There is no proof that the people who send these e-mails are actually from the nations mentioned in the text," the commercial officer exclaimed bitterly. "We feel that it hurts our countries when such correspondence is made public. We have been working with the Saudi authorities to stop the fraud and we feel we are doing a good job. There is much less of this sort of activity now than there was some years back."
"It takes two to tango," he continued, "so nothing bad can come of these overtures unless a businessman makes a poor decision. People must understand that sometimes when there is serious economic dislocation in a nation, some people will try anything to survive."
