419er (four-one-niner):
The Modern Form of the "Douche Tax"

§ 419 in the Nigerian Criminal Code deals with fraudulent business practices on the Internet (also known as "(Advance-fee scamming"):
Whereas in the mid-1980s, European academics and businessmen were still being solicited by snail mail for assistance in transferring black money from Nigeria to safe third countries by disclosing account data or sending blank signatures or "advance payment" for settlement, since the mid-90s, practically all email account owners receive such offers via the Internet, meanwhile of course not only from Nigeria but from all over West Africa and the whole world - should you have the idea to get in there: The easier way to get rid of your money is to simply bring it to me at ZID, from EUR 1.000 you get at least 1 beer!

Just to clarify that this is not a fairy tale: in Austria, companies have already gone bankrupt because the management believed they could make big money here. In the largest reported case in Austria (still in the pre-Internet era), the amount involved was ATS 44,000,000 (approx. EUR 3,200,000).

From 2006 onwards, the fraudster' scam changes in part: by now, so many unsophisticated Internet users get into their net that the main problem is now money laundering: they are now looking for people into whose account the money is deposited. They can really keep a part of it (for now), the rest they pay out via Western Union (or Bitcoins) to unknown recipients.
Since payments via Western Union (or Bitcoins) are generally untraceable, the only person who can be identified is the account holder, from whom the entire amount is usually reclaimed - in addition to the not inconsiderable penalties for money laundering and fraud.
Internet auction houses (e. g. eBay) and sales portals (e. g. willhaben.at) have been "discovered" as another "scam": the fraudsters offer to buy an item, then overpay for it, e. g. by check, have the difference (minus an apparently generous commission) paid out in cash (or via Western Union) - and a few days later the check bounces!
From about 2011, another method is on the rise: cheap properties are advertised that either do not exist or do not belong to the advertiser, but a deposit is required before the viewing - this money is then never seen again.

Massive Scam at TU Graz

At the beginning of 2020, a wave of scam emails reached TU Graz, the sender always seemed to be one of the deans (or deputies) of TU Graz (the email addresses corresponded to the email addresses of the deans, only the @ was replaced by a dot and instead @gmail.com or similar was appended at the back, i. e. instead of e. g. vorname.nachname@tugraz.at vorname.nachname.tugraz.at@gmail.com was used.
In the email, time pressure was suggested and if one answered, one was asked in one of the next emails to purchase vouchers at Google Play, Amazon etc., the money would be refunded later …
Since the email addresses of the deans were checked and who is employed in which faculty, one can already speak of a simple form of "social engineering", which is facilitated by the fact that the hierarchy of the TU Graz is published in TUGRAZonline.

Since then, individual OUs have been attacked again and again, the sender addresses unfortunately no longer correspond to the above-mentioned scheme and are therefore difficult to block automatically, making it all the more important to configure the email client securely, i. e. to always display the sender's entire email address and, ideally, to trust only signed emails.

Scambaiter / 419eater

As a reaction to such attacks, a culture of its own has developed in the meantime to deceive these criminals themselves and to get them either to deposit money themselves or at least to keep them on their toes for days or weeks by email or to get them to perform senseless actions and to have themselves photographed in the process.
In various forums you can find hints on how to scam the scammers yourself or read some really funny email correspondence.

If you are interested in a scambait yourself, please notify ZID so that we do not block your account if we see that you are communicating with a scammer or phisher!

CEO-Fraud / BEC

A similar scam is the fake president trick, where also via "social engineering" attempts are made to intervene in the chain of command for payouts, until 2019 with fake emails, from 2019 on even with fake phone calls and soon there will probably be live fake video calls ("real time deep fake").