Investors, Trump and the Illuminati: What the “Nigerian prince” scams became in 2024

This report surveys the ecosystem of “Nigerian” (419) email scams, outlining their core social engineering traits (requests to reply, promises of large windfalls, mismatched sender vs. Reply-To, free-mail accounts, poor language) and profiling prevalent lures such as wealthy benefactor donations, compensation notices, lottery wins, romance/dating setups, B2B investment offers, and event-driven themes (e.g., COVID-19, elections). Using anonymized exemplars, it emphasizes that these campaigns often lack overtly malicious links or attachments and instead rely on prolonged correspondence to build trust, urging recipients to verify sender details, scrutinize inconsistencies, and avoid engaging with unsolicited offers.