Security Experts Warn of Localized 419 Scam Emails

Security researchers warn of advance-fee email scams in languages other than English, which suggests that fraudsters are using automated translation services.

Advance-fee fraud emails, also known as 419 or Nigerian letters, are scams in which victims are promised a large return on investment if they send payments in advance.

A recent 419 scam intercepted by security researchers from Symantec uses a traditional lure, purporting to come from the widow of a former Kuwait embassy worker in Cote d'Ivoire.

The email says the woman suffers from cancer and only has a few months left to live. She claims to have no chlidren and wants to leave $2.5 million with the recipient to be used for charity work. Of course, various sums of money are required to do the paper work and pay other fees.

What makes this scam interesting is not the story it uses, but the fact that its written in Welsh, a language spoken by well under a million people.

"It’s unlikely that the 419 scammer can read and write Welsh so it’s likely the mail would have been written in English and then translated into Welsh using an automated language translation website," says Sean Butler, senior malware operations engineer at Symantec's cloud division.

Also, the message doesn't appear to have been randomly sent out, as it is usually the case with English-language scam emails, but targeted to a Wales resident.

The emails come after last week Symantec reported a German language scam capitalizing on the recent events in Egypt, with fraudsters asking for help to move $2.5 million of former president Hosni Mubarak's money.

It's clear that scammers have begun targeting non-English speakers in the hope that they are less familiar with this type of fraud and might be tricked easier.