by HAL MOUNTSAUERKRAUTEN, Alternate Reality News Service Crime Writer
The Nigerian Prince has been deposed. Your bank does not need you to verify your account information (especially if you keep your money in a credit union). There is no video of you masturbating to something you saw online (unless you took it yourself, in which case you are beyond the help of this article).
There's a new kidding in town. And, people are losing their shirts, not to mention their sneakers, smoking jackets and riding britches, because of it.
It starts with a classic: American Revolutionary Major Jacob Baker died wealthy, childless and intestate. Somebody has to get his estate, which, thanks to the miracle of compound interest, is now worth half a gabillion dollars: why not you? Just give us proof that you're a Baker heir (you know, a blood sample, or an affidavit that you know a couple of recipes), and we'll add you to the association of heirs who will benefit from winning the case to settle his estate.
For a small fee, of course. 200+ year-old court cases don't pay for themselves, you know.
Sorry to break it to the thousands of people who joined the associations over the decades, but there was no Major Jacob Baker in the Revolutionary War so you cannot be his imaginary heir (as appropriate as that seems). In short, it's a scam. One that is so classic it may go back thousands of years.
A tablet discovered in a tomb in Egypt in the 1920s invites the reader to contribute to a fund to recover the estate of Praetor Al-Bakir. Early twentieth century Egyptologists (like cryptologists, but with more sand in parts of the body that don't usually accumulate sand) were not certain how to interpret the message, but our modern experience with internet scams would seem to make its meaning clear. Painfully, bank account-reducingly clear.
You would have thought that a scam so old wouldn't still be able to con people, especially since it had been thoroughly debunked (it has to sleep in the barn with the horses). However, you know what they say: when one scam is discovered to be a fraud...it can still work. What part of gullible do you not understand? But, uhh, we can update the old saying a little to: when one scam only attracts blind old ladies in nursing homes and guys named Billy-Joe-Bob, another will rise to take its place.
So, for the next few years, expect your spam filters to be flooded with email claiming to look for people who were taken in by the Baker scam. If you become a member of their association (for a small fee, of course), they will sue the associations claiming to represent Baker heirs who would benefit from winning the case to settle his estate. All that was required to join the new association was a receipt from one of the old Baker heirs associations, or a copy of the email asking you to join it (and did we mention the modest fee? It's very important, the modest fee, is...to...ensure a speedy resolution to your case. Yeah. That's it. A speedy resolution. That's what we want the modest fee for).
"That is so next level," said computer security expert Hermione Gingras, "it's like it burst into another game entirely!"
"Yeah, I signed on to the Suing Baker Heirs Associations Association," said a man who asked to be identified only as Billy-Bob-Joe. (I stand corrected.) "The cause is just. The reward will be substantial. And, all it cost me was to send them all my banking information and the deed to my house! How do I know it's not a scam? They let me keep a copy! Would they have done that if they were scamming me?"
"Okay, maybe the next level is actually a hidden level for a lot of people," Gingras, a consultant with CyberScary Security, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of MultiNatCorp ("We do protective cyberstuff!"), allowed. "Still, it's obviously the same game..."
How many people have fallen for the suing the Bakers heirs scammers scam? "How high is up?" Gingras answered. She was not being rhetorical. Apparently, up, as calculated by the World Statistics You Never Imagined Were Calculable But Are Agency, is somewhere between 300,0007 and 1,237,540 kilometres high, depending upon whether the swallow is African or European.
Is there anything that can be done to stop people from falling for the scam? "People being people, many will not listen to how they can protect themselves against the scam," Gingras replied. "Government being governments, many will not legislate against the scam and many more will only loosely enforce any legislation they do enact. My best advice? Never name your child any combination of 'Billy,' 'Joe' and 'Bob'!"