Stella Muchemwa, English and Communication Department, Solusi University, Zimbabwe

E-mail: muchemwas@solusi.ac.zw; muchemwas@ymail.com

“Civil servants caught up in stands scam” ; “SLECA warns customers of scam” ; IRS reiterates warning of pervasive telephone scam” ; “Phishing scams increase by 87 percent worldwide: Report”; “Attorney General warns of 2014 scam increase”; “Pishing scams explode worldwide” and “419 Internet scams on the increase: Global losses to fraudsters are at least $9.3 billion”.

Magazines and newspapers headlines as well as radio, TV and internet news headings are full of such scam information warning people not to fall prey.

Scamming has become a common practice universally.

Due to this problem, the researcher has decided to carry out a study on scam for an international academic paper presentation where audience is high.

It can be argued that although words play a vital part in society: to communicate knowledge, experiences, ideas, hopes, feelings as well as to understand others, they can be manipulated and used for evil; the use of rhetoric that had been condemned by Plato as a means to deceit instead of exposing truth.

An example is the scam language.

A scam is an attempt to defraud a person or group after first gaining their confidence, in the classical sense of trust.

The con artist (an individual operating alone or in concert with others) uses various scam techniques which evolve on daily basis resulting in recipients being drawn into scam nets one after another losing millions of dollars, valuable assets and even lives.

The weapon that is used by the con artist to lure the victim is the exploitation of human psyche such as dishonesty, honesty, vanity, compassion, credulity, irresponsibility, naivety and greed.

Despite the preponderance of advance fee in most fraud scams, many in society still fall victim to such con games.

Unfortunate, the internet has provided scammers with an opportunity to perpetrate fraud on a global scale.

Due to scam widespread, scam language has emerged, for instance, con artist, vishing, phishing, pharming, flim-flams and 419s /advance-fee frauds (AFFs).

Other terms include: skimming, whaling, baiting-and-switching, pretexting, key logging, boiler rooms, splogs (fake blog sites), scare-ware and malware.

Cybercrime and the recently coined abbreviation RUMBLE, (meaning Recruitment of Unwitting Money-launderers by Bogus Letters of Employment) have become terms in usage.

E-mail fraud is not something new; however, the tricks that are associated with it in committing the cybercrime crime evolve on daily bases.

It originated as spam, that is, the unsolicited bulk e-mails as a price of an open electronic communications system.

It is believed to have originated in 1978 when the first one was identified, however, the spam boom started in the early 1990s.

There are numerous internet-based varieties of scam. Current scams may be classified according to purpose and channel of the scam, for example:

auto scams

on-line scams

auction scams

travel scams

employment scams

social network scams

financial scams

face to face scams

telephone scams

Real Estate scams

It should be understood that there is only one intention of all con artists: to make money unlawfully. This can be achieved by various techniques which include;

directly stealing cash from the victim (fake online banking services)

subscriptions to online fake stores

the sale of stolen databases on the black market

spam mailings

spread of malware

The scam type under study is a relatively new scam, the Capacity Building scam (the name being derived from the proposed workshops and seminars, e.g., Capacity building workshop/seminar).

It is a fraudulent e-mail scam meant to trap professionals and academicians who usually attend workshops and seminars.

It is characterized by:

an advance registration fee for workshop attendance and paper presentation

promise of sponsorship for travel and keep-up for attendees especially those from the less privileged countries.

an advance for DHL costs to send electronic air tickets and all technological assets to use during the seminar /workshop is asked for

mirror Websites that vanish when the proposed monies are paid and this is usually toward the allegedly date of event

Many researches on scam usually concentrate on statistics of victims and the suffering they encounter, most probably, leaving out the main weapon used: the language.

This research therefore is a gap filler concentrating on analyzing language used by these crooks.

The research can also be seen as a respond to Professor Michael Halliday who, in a recent address to the International Systemic Functional Linguistics Congress in Lucknow, India, urged researchers to direct their future efforts toward applicable research; “research that has arisen from and meets the immediate needs of the community”.

This hermeneutical study examined and brought to the fore both the linguistic and nonlinguistic features of e-mail scam rhetoric which has a rising luring rampant effect on millions of the earth population today.

The con artist employs a plethora of scam techniques resulting in recipients being drawn into the scam nets one after another losing millions of dollars and even lives each year.

The researcher strongly believes that the best defense against scam e-mails is a comprehensive public education about the nature and characteristics of scam language that, using Schaffer 915)’s words, “signal a con at work”.

The study explored in depth the scam rhetoric which is hopped to give an up-to-date and extensive perspective on the scam issue, thereby exposing even the seemingly “not so important” aspects that people may not be aware of.

The given scam background motivated the approach of the current inquiry which targets the persuasiveness of scam rhetoric through Critical Discourse Analysis of selected vignettes (the Capacity Building e-mail scams).

Traditionally, content analytical approaches were norm in critical media studies but have, however, revealed bias, hence a need for new appropriate techniques.

The qualitative research technique was applied as it is more appropriate to such a study which requires nit-grits of scam language.

This technique also enables the researcher and targeted readers to learn more on the scammers’ persuasive language.

The researcher explored, gained a deeper understanding and exposed the linguistic features and the ideologies hidden behind the Capacity Building scam e-mails.

Capacity Building scam e-mails were collected from the internet from the appropriate websites for the past two years to date.

This period is chosen because The Capacity Building scam is a relatively new scam.

From the corpus related, e-mails were selected for the study.

They were ready for analysis and were analyzed using the Ruiz Model; one of the most developed model in communication, culture and society within the Critical Discourse Analysis approach.

The primary purpose of discourse analysis is to provide a deeper understanding of texts and it focuses primarily on social problems.

The Ruiz Model is characterized by three level of analysis, that is, the textual, contextual and the interpretation levels.

On the textual level, the written discourse was taken as the object of study, was analyzed and characterized.

The focus was on formal features, for instance, vocabulary, grammar, syntax and other features where discourses and genres are realized linguistically.

At contextual level, discourse was considered and analyzed as a single act and context, though regarded both situational and intertextual in nature.

Finally, an explanation of discourse, which is the ultimate aim of the analysis, was given in a coherent narrative form.

The Capacity Building e-mail scams are different from other scams, for example, the Nigerian fraud email that are infested with mistakes of all kind.

These are professionally and formally written having the following features: formal e-mail format; proper grammar, correct spellings; syntactically constructed and varied sentences with all the necessary punctuation marks and cohesive devices.

Also, sentences are semantically clear giving the e-mail an authentic countenance.

The e-mails have well-chosen diction, for instance, reference statement in one of the e-mails reads, “Forum registration and sponsorship approval”; this is exactly how the e-mail can be summed up since the e-mail has information on forum registration and sponsorship approval.

Another feature that can be seen above; the e-mails are characterized by formal and appropriate graphology.

However, the Capacity Building e-mails have scam betraying features: the e-mails have no alleged institution letterheads and their addressees are anonymous in their first communication.

Again, the e-mails advertise for too many forums, for instance, one called for three forums, one in July and the other two in consecutive weeks of August of the same year in America, Europe and Africa respectively.

Also, there are embedded links leading to fraudulent information, for example, “International Delegates' Payments addressed to … (a link is given); Institute are processed through the appointed Event Management Firm … (another link)in charge of processing” and “to confirm your acceptance of the offered Attendance Sponsorship at… (another one).

More so, the e-mails are generic in nature: In one mail it reads; “We are delighted to invite you to the International Training Forum in Sustainable Development that will be held in … (place)from…to….(date)”.

In another , it says “We are delighted to invite you to the International Training Seminars in Sustainable Development that will be held in…(place) from…(date)”. Every word in both extracts is identical except for one, “forum” in the first extract; which is substituted by “seminars” in the second.

The other scam betraying feature of the Capacity Building scam is the employment of persuasive strategies, including flattery. The contents of the packages offered are extravagant and too good to be true, that is, with accommodation, per diem (covering daily meals and incidental expenses), round trip airline tickets and much more.

The Capacity Building e-mails have pronounced similarities in form and wording that gives these scam e-mails a noticeable generic bearing.

Capacity Building e-mail scams are grammatically written in contrast to most of the e-mail scams making it rather difficult to see the fraud in them.

However, they have scam betraying features, for instance, absence of letterheads and named addressees.

They are generic in nature and they contain promises that are too good to be true, thus exposing the scam.

Scam traps can be evaded by avoiding downloading programs from untrusted sources and being careful with e-mails from unknown senders.

It is imperative to check out the credibility of e-mail source and being skeptical about all e-mail messages.

One should use one’s knowledge of argumentation, evidence and proof to analyze claims and the ethical basis of proposed actions.

Most importantly, it should be remembered that the best resistance against scam is avoidance.