Some SF State Students have recieved an email from a former Iraqi bank official who wants to transfer $15 million in to their account while he works undercover in Africa. The money belonged to Saddam Hussein’s youngest son, claims the email.

The message may sound unusual to some, but many see it as just another email scam.

"I got something like that one time," said Pablo Portillo of a message he received from a person claiming to have been prosecuted in Africa and wanting to transfer his fortune to someone else’s account before he left the country.

“Without even thinking about it I knew it was a scam," said Portillo, an SF State political science major.

The circumstances in these emails may differ from time to time -- a dying child, a millionaire who needs to leave a country in war, a husband who died in a plane crash -- but they usually have two things in common -- money and bank accounts.

A person has to be very naive to believe in this type of scam," he said. “But some people are desperate for money and they just fall for it.”

This type of fraud was is in the top seven categories of Internet fraud complaints, according to a research released by the Internet Fraud Complaint Center in 2002.

In that same year the average amount of money lost in a similar type of fraud known as the Nigerian Letter was about $4,000, based on what the victims reported to the center.

Julianne Tolson, consulting and training coordinator of SF State’s division of information technology, said many people, including students and faculty, forward her these type of emails asking for her opinion on whether they seem legit or not.

Her answer is usually the same, she said: “Of course not.”

It is easy and cheap to post out messages to millions of people and expect that at least a few will answer to it, she said. With lists of e-mail addresses in spam lists that are available in the market it is extremely easy for a spammer to spread out a message, Tolson said.

“More than half of my email is always junk mail,” said SF State Junior Marisa Torres. “ But if it’s not from someone I know I don’t’ even open it,” said Ihsan Amanatullah, an SF State graduate student.

Mailboxes become filled with more and more spam each year. According to a study released by the International Data Corporation (IDC) earlier this month, 38 percent of all email sent in North America in 2004 was spam.

In 2001 the number of spam sent out in the nation was 2.1 billion. By the end of this year that number is expected to increase to 11 billion.

“If no body ever responded to spam it would have gone away, but believe it or not there are some people that respond,” Tolson said.
Internet scams are just another type of spam, she said. “But they are more psychological than pure marketing.”

Anti-spam software and filters have been making it easier to flag and delete unwanted mail, Tolson said. "But spammers keep changing titles, key words and the e-mails address to make it harder to track them."

Therefore, many spam messages slip through the system and end up in people’s regular mailbox, and that usually is the case of scam messages, according to Tolson.

When that happens, her advice to people is to “be suspicious of every thing.”

Even if it sounds legit people should do a Google search using some of the words used in the email, she said.

“The internet works both ways. People can find out information about you, but you also can find out about them,” she said.

“When I got that email I just asked myself how does this person know to trust me? How did he get my e-mail?” said Portillo. “He could find his best friend and deposit the money into his account.”

Tolson said that it is important that these scams be reported to authorities. Although it seems hard to trace down the person it is possible and it has been done in the past, she said.

Some SF State students also are concerned about the damages these messages can cause besides the financial loss of an individual.

“It can hurt an entire community,” said SF State junior Elaine Lew after reading the email sent from the person who claimed to be from Iraq and wanted to transfer $15 into someone’s account.

“Although this is probably not his real name, and he is not from Iraq, when he signs the email with an Arabic descent name (Ahmed Fassou) and people realize it is a scam, it will make people have a bad impression on that community,” she said.

But spam and scam problems tend to get better, Tolson said. Although they will not simply go away, stories about spam viruses and scams are becoming part of people’s discussions as they constantly see it on the news.

“People are becoming more educated about it,” she said.