A new sting operation conducted by the Nigerian Economic and Financial Crimes Commission has already nabbed 18 spammers. Dubbed Operation Eagle Claw, it has also led to the shut down of 800 malicious websites. The Commission has partnered with Microsoft on the project and said its goal is to remove Nigeria from the top 10 list of countries where the most scam emails originate from.

The Nigerian or 419 scam, named after the section number in the Nigerian Penal code that makes them illegal, has been around almost as long as the web itself and has several variations of a story designed to make the recipient think he will receive a huge fortune if he helps a foreign citizen (often a member of a non-existent royal family, a long lost relative who’s been killed, or a clergy member) transfer their money out of the country. The scammer either poses as the person themselves or as their lawyer. All the person has to do is turn over their personal info and wire over a small processing fee.

Once the scammer has snared a victim the requests keep coming. A bank, legal or government fee has to be paid, or sometimes a bribe. The game keeps going until the victim’s bank accounts run dry, and then the scammer disappears. The scam has bankrupted people, destroyed marriages and in a few cases has led to murder. At least three people have been kidnapped and murdered after traveling to Nigeria to seek this fortune, and in another case a man shot and killed an official at the Nigerian embassy in Prague after they refused to return the money he lost to a Nigerian scammer. 16 people have been kidnapped by Nigerian scammers when they went to the country after falling for the scam, but were released unharmed.

Recent variations on the scam include spams claming the recipient has won a foreign lottery, or had their profile discovered by someone on a dating site, and anyone who has tried to sell something on Ebay or Craigslist has likely gotten multiple spams from 419 scammers offering to buy the item for several times more than the asking price and asking it to shipped to a foreign address.

Operation Eagle Claw has just begun but it seems to be off to a very good start. Nigeria’s reputation has been ruined by these scammers and hopefully the operation will put a very big dent in the volume of 419 scam messages that clog all our inboxes.