Statistics 2004

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I have been looking at our e-mail statistics for 2004. I expect you will agree with me that statistics are usually a pretty dry subject. But looking at this type of crime, the figures are telling only a part of the story.

Last year we received a total of 4115 scam e-mails. On average this is 11 e-mails per day. This includes all types of e-mails such as the Manfred Becker inheritance scam to the money transfer story. But basically you can split the e-mails into two categories.

The first category is the well known 419-scam type of e-mail. Last year we received 2142 e-mails, either directly or through other persons who sent us the messages they received. Of this figure 1926 e-mails were through our own e-mail accounts. Just 216 e-mails were sent to us from readers in Germany.

As you can see that accounts for only about 50% of the total. Almost 48% of all scam e-mails we received were the lottery prize type!

During the whole of 2003 we only received a total of 212 Lottery e-Mails. This means that the lottery scam has increased by 930% in just one year!

Considering that this type of scam only started turning up about 3 to 4 years ago, this is a huge increase in this type of scam e-mail. It also implies that the lottery scam is not only enormously successful but that a swing to easier fraud methods is in process.

I have had calls from over the whole world, from the USA to Palestine, from Australia to Alaska, from prople who wanted to ask me if these e-mails were to be believed.

A lot of the people who called had already paid sums of up to 1500 Euros, which is about 1950 dollars, to the criminals. Some had even paid a second fee of around 8000 to 10000 US Dollars. As the money was transferred through Western Union, there was not much to be done about it.

But if you realise that some of the victims only earn between 300 and 500 USD a month, then you begin to realise the tragedy behind it.

I don’t think you can blame the victims. If you only earn a maximum of 500 dollars a month, what would a million dollar prize mean to you?

Now I would like explain to you what sort of money is being made with these scams.

The typical scam e-mail is sent to an average of 1500 recipients. Taking the total sum of e-mails which we received last year, this is a total of 6.172.500 e-mails. That looks a lot at first sight, but you can reduce this sum by about 50% due to invalid accounts and spam filters.

Just the same it means that 3.086.250 e-mails got delivered. The most people ignore these e-mails, but even if we take only 1 % of this total, about 308,625 people still reply and end up paying money.

As the sums paid vary from 500 up to 15000 Euros and more, I want to make the maths easier. Let’s just use a sum which is often paid, around about 800 Euros. Even this sum generates a total of 246.900.000 Euros! Which is about 320.970.000 dollars!


What does this mean for 2005?

Most definitely there will be an increase in the lottery e-mails. The old stories will still be used, but there will be an increase in new methods, such as using websites where people communicate. This can be networking, partner searching or auction websites.

In 2004 the criminals have hit the mother lode with the lottery scam. Will that remain the same in 2005? Well, we’ll just have to wait and see.