National Threat Assessment 2008. Organised Crime - Politie

Almost all contacts in advance fee fraud are by telephone or email. When the
target has responded to the first email his details are transferred to a ‘job owner’
who carries out the swindle. The target is then given different contact details.
If victims start asking difficult questions and do not immediately fall for the
swindle they may also be approached by another contact person. As soon as
the victims become ‘annoying’, when they stop paying and really want to see
the money promised to them, the swindler breaks off all contact.
During an investment fraud the swindlers quite often close the ‘Dutch’ office of
the company. The customers are given the new (foreign) address and telephone
number, at which the swindler can initially still be contacted. Again swindlers
will hardly be contactable, or will be impossible to contact altogether, once the
victim starts asking ‘difficult’ questions or wants to see his money. As soon as
reports appear in the media in which certain investment funds are mentioned as
being (possibly) suspect, the fraudsters disappear (abroad). In some cases new
attempts are made to contact the victims after a while using so-called ‘sucker
lists’. Sucker lists are lists of people who have already been conned by a mala
fide stockbroker, which means that they are vulnerable to this type of fraud.
3.3.3 Scale
It is impossible to make a reliable estimate of the scale of fraud constructions, as
fraud constructions are based on various underlying types of fraud. It is difficult
to estimate the scale of these types of fraud for various reasons, including
aspects of the registration process, dark numbers and differences in definitions.
Nevertheless, we have still tried to provide an idea of the possible scale of the
two types of fraud discussed here.
Advance fee fraud
In the period between 1 October 2006 and 1 November 2007 a total of 175
reports of advance fee fraud were received. These reports were the starting
point for further investigations as part of Project Apollo. 42 One of the results of
the project was to identify 2536 people as victims. The victims mainly came from
the United States, Italy, the United Kingdom and Germany. Gangs of swindlers
who reside in the Netherlands usually victimise people abroad. On the other
hand, Dutch citizens are mostly victimised by swindlers operating abroad. The
number of cases in which groups abroad have victimised people in the
Netherlands is unknown.
42
‘Apollo’ was a project launched by various investigating authorities in October 2006, the objective
being to make the Netherlands unattractive to West African criminal networks. The project
involved collaboration with private parties such as financial institutions and Internet providers.
108 National Threat Assessment 2008 – Organised crime