Good dog days scam is the perfect ticket

This has been quite the week for news of scams, swindles and assorted fraudulencies that have served to jack up an already high misery index during these sweltering dog days of early August.

Tuesday we got word that the Alfred Knopf publishing house would pay Bill Clinton $10 million to write his memoirs. The largest advance in U.S. publishing history for such a book, the announcement was notable for having employed the words “Bill Clinton” and “nonfiction” in the same sentence.

On Wednesday, if it hadn’t been for news of the latest trickeries targeting Mainers there’d have been hardly any news at all. For starters, a Buxton man reportedly admitted to the FBI that he had bilked investors out of more than $600,000, promising them that they would not lose their money when, according to prosecutors, he knew damn well they would. The man’s attorney claimed that his client is not fit to stand trial because his frontal lobe dementia (the client’s – not the lawyer’s) makes it difficult for him to remember much about the deal.

On the same page of the newspaper another story warned of swindles that play on religious loyalties to persuade the gullible to mortgage homes or pull cash from retirement funds on the promise of huge returns from investments in cargo ships and African diamond mines. Naive investors have lost nearly $2 billion in the past three years in the name of religion. Just days ago, the alleged mastermind behind a $578 million scheme pulled off by Greater Ministries of Tampa, Fla., received a 27-year prison term.

“I’ve seen more money stolen in the name of God than in any other way,” said Deborah Bortner, president of the North American Securities Administrators Association. The scam artists often predict an imminent financial or social crisis, or claim they will reinvest part of the profits in a worthy cause, she said, and some perpetrators have kneeled to pray with their victims while picking their pockets.

But the day’s most intriguing story was one about an offer a Bangor business had received in the mail and which Bangor police subsequently forwarded to postal inspectors. A healthy cut of a fortune allegedly being held in Nigeria could be had if the firm would simply make a phone call to the scheme’s promoter. My e-mail that day included a message from a Down East reader who had received a variation of the offer via fax, a copy of which she attached.

“Years ago I arrived at the conclusion that I am probably not the brightest person on earth,” my correspondent wrote. “However, my sense of smell is still pretty good, and the odor of rat on this letter is rather strong.”

The fax, which has also been turned over to postal inspectors, was a “strictly confidential” letter from a “Dr. Paul Akin,” who identified himself as the director of approvals and appraisals of the Federal Ministry of Aviation in Nigeria for the past 15 years. “Your company’s name was introduced to me through a reliable friend of mine at the foreign affairs office in Lagos,” he explained.

In his government position Aiken had persuaded foreign contractors to “over-invoice” contracts, and $28.5 million had accumulated, he claimed. But because, as civil servants in Nigeria, Akin and his colleagues are not allowed to maintain an offshore account “we decided to look for a reliable and trustworthy partner to whom we can remit these funds into his private or company’s account, hence my contacting you.”

All that was needed for my Down East friend to acquire 35 percent of the fortune would be “your private telephone and fax numbers, two copies of your company’s letterhead papers and proforma invoice duly stamped and signed by you. Also, you will need to include your full banking particulars where this money should be wired. With these blank documents we shall transcribe your company’s information on the actual contract specification and put up claims and demand for the official approval of these funds…” Akin was to be contacted immediately by phone or fax so “we can get these funds into your account within a few working days.”

As you might expect, the unflappable Washington County recipient of the appeal was suitably unimpressed. Slipping into the down-home vernacular, she suggested that perhaps Dr. Aiken “has heard that us backwoods folks is in desperate need, bein’ as how the fish factories an’ shoe factories an’ such is all closin’ down and movin’ out of the country, what with NAFTA providin’ 10-cents-an-hour labor from other countries, and no OSHA or FDA inspections, and all… This might be just the ticket for us. Good thing we’ve got connections at the foreign office in Lagos.”

NEWS columnist Kent Ward lives in Winterport. His e-mail address is olddawg@bangordailynews.net.