The development of the Internet has revolutionised the way we live, work and connect with the world. But, as in any self-respecting revolution, there are those who have taken advantage of it.

With the birth of the Internet, one of the greatest revolutions in human history began: an interconnected world where information can be shared instantly, just a click away. Today, the Web has become an indispensable vehicle for the dissemination of knowledge and the creation of new opportunities; but fraudsters of all kinds have also taken advantage of these opportunities. If there is one lesson that the history of innovation has taught us, it is that where there is technological progress, there is always someone ready to exploit its holes for less than noble ends. But how did we get to this point? And what have been the most sensational scams that have marked the history of the Internet?

The first steps of phishing: when you click on the wrong link

In the online landscape, phishing is one of the most widespread and insidious scams. Literally, ‘phishing’ means fishing, and it is misspelled precisely because textual errors are often a common feature of many online scams. And phishing is exactly what scammers do: they try to bait you with your personal information. The technique is simple: they send you an email or message that appears to come from a trusted source, such as your bank or a large e-commerce site. But all you have to do is click on that link and enter your login details, and poof, you’ve been hooked.

Phishing originated in the 1990s, at the same time as the development of the first e-mail services. Fraudsters realised early on that by creating an almost perfect copy of official e-mails, they could induce people to enter personal information on bogus sites.

Today, phishing is no longer limited to email or the obsolete SMS: it strikes via social media and messaging apps.

In 2023, according to theAnti-Phishing Working Group, the number of attacks carried out (and we are only talking about those detected) exceeded 5 million, continuing to grow from previous years. Also in 2023, the Federal Trade Commission and other cybersecurity sources indicate that global losses due to phishing and other online scams exceeded $45 billion.

And the fraudsters are becoming more and more sophisticated. They are like those circus magicians who try to distract you in order to make your wallet disappear: it is all about making the right move while you are distracted. Today, some phishing emails are so well crafted that, without particularly careful verification, they could fool anyone.

But the scammers’ preferred strategy is the opposite: they create a deliberately slightly ungrammatical and stilted message, and if necessary associate it with a fake site that is not quite identical to the original, but a little botched. In this way, they automatically select the dumbest users – the only ones who can fall for it – and in this way reduce the energy needed to carry out the scam by concentrating on the dumb ones. This way, they do not waste their precious time trying to cheat the slightly smarter users, who are more likely to discover the loophole before opening their wallets.

Nigerian scams: from phishing to the Prince Scam

Ah, the legendary Nigerian scams! They have their roots in the 1980s, well before the Internet era. Originally, these letters arrived by ordinary mail. With the advent of the Internet, the scam was perfected: scammers became more sophisticated, involving fake banks, non-existent lawyers and complicated stories to make everything more believable. Despite being one of the best-known (and most exposed) scams in the world, it continues to thrive, exploiting people’s greed and desperation, but also the shame of those who have fallen for it, who feel too dumb to have the courage to press charges.

The mechanism is so famous and repetitive that we could find it in a comedy sketch: someone – often a ‘prince’ or a high-ranking official in a desperate situation – contacts you with a sob story. He needs to move a large sum of money (millions of dollars, why not?) but, to do so, he needs you. Don’t worry: you will then do half for one, like honest gentlemen. Of course, you will first have to pay a small fee to ‘unlock’ the funds. After that, you will receive your half of the loot. Ah, no, forgive me: there is an official who got in the way and you have to give him a ‘tip’ to get him to sign a document that is indispensable for the withdrawal of the money. Obviously the tip is on you, but if you don’t pay it, not only goodbye millions: you also lose what you have already sent. Spoiler: the hiccups will be progressively more and more expensive, and the money will never arrive, but you will still lose everything you have invested.

Over the years, these scams have evolved and adapted. From Nigeria, the prince moved to Kosovo, then Libya, now Ukraine and Lebanon. In short, he is always in a place of high turbulence and he needs you to unlock these blessed millions.

So, a word of advice: if a rich prince in trouble sends you a ramshackle message in which he promises you a lot of money if you send him a little of your own first, no matter how touching his story sounds, you’d better think again.

But if the Nigerian prince is a little bit going out of fashion, today’s fraudsters can invent themselves to be members of charitable organisations, real estate investors or even ex-military men looking for help to retire. For example, Valentin has become famous: the poor child who, after the collapse of the USSR, was freezing to death and didn’t ask you for money but only to send him a stove to his home in the centre of Siberia. After a thousand shipping difficulties, he was satisfied if you sent him money directly to buy the stove. The creativity of fraudsters has no limits.

Tinder Swindler: love is blind, but so is your wallet

One of the most recent and well-known examples of online scams is the scam for love. It is well described in the Netflix documentary Tinder Swindler. Simon Leviev, aka Shimon Hayut, pretends to be a diamond magnate on Tinder and convinces his victims – mostly women – to lend him huge sums of money to deal with fictitious emergencies. Leviev creates an image of success and luxury to attract his victims, financing his jet-set lifestyle with money taken from new women. A vicious circle that has led dozens of victims to financial ruin. It works – and even better – also with the opposite sex: often, behind the desperately beautiful and somewhat clueless little blonde in love with you, hides a burly smart-ass covered in tattoos, but skilled with the keyboard and with image editing.

Mind you, there is nothing wrong with looking for love online, but when your soul mate – whom you have never seen in person – asks you to send €100,000 to save her from some terrible trouble, it is a good time to think about the disinterested romantic relationship.

The Fyre Festival disaster: a scam of influencers and fake luxuries

Let us now turn to the story of the legendary Fyre Festival, perhaps one of the most blatant examples of a scam built on the wave of social media. Organised by Billy McFarland and rapper Ja Rule, the Fyre Festival is advertised as an exclusive luxury event; scheduled to take place between April and May 2017 on a tropical island in the Bahamas, with dream villas, gourmet food and world-class artists. Influencers on Instagram, such as Bella Hadid and Kendall Jenner, are being paid to post glamorous invitations, and thousands of people are spending astronomical sums to buy exclusive tickets to the event destined to make history.

And, indeed, into the story it goes: when the participants arrive on site, they discover that the island is anything but a paradise. No luxury villas, only emergency tents. No gourmet food, just bland sandwiches. No festival, just a logistical disaster that leaves everyone stranded for days in pitiful conditions bordering on survival. The scam is so impressive that it has become a symbol of how social media can create illusions that shatter on contact with reality.

By the way: McFarland was later sentenced to six years in prison for fraud. They confiscated 26 million dollars from him but he has to pay restitution of at least 100.

The dark side of cryptocurrencies: PlusToken, OneCoin and NFTs by the nose

One cannot talk about online scams without mentioning cryptocurrencies. which, for many, are still a mystery. But one thing is clear: where there is digital gold, there are also scammers.

One of the biggest scams in the cryptocurrency world is PlusToken, a Ponzi scheme disguised as a digital wallet. It is a cryptocurrency platform that guarantees returns of up to 10%.

Not per year: per month! Promising exorbitant returns to investors, PlusToken raised over three billion dollars from more than two million investors before collapsing in 2019, leaving everyone high and dry.

And then there is OneCoin, a supposed cryptocurrency that turns out to be a scam on a global scale, with estimated losses of over $4 billion. Its founder, Ruja Ignatova, nicknamed ‘the cryptocurrency queen’, mysteriously disappears with the loot and is still at large. The FBI offers a bounty of $250,000 to whoever finds her; and this time it’s real money.

But we cannot mention the bizarre world of NFTs (Non-Fungible Tokens), in particular the Bored Apes that made them famous. NFTs, which represent unique (and often questionable) digital works of art, have become the subject of unbridled speculation, with some images of cartoon-style monkeys drawn with a handful of pixels being bought and sold for millions of dollars. Obviously, those who speculated and got rid of the digital monkeys before their value plummeted to practically zero took home a lot of money.Although not all NFT-related transactions are scams, it is clear that the market has been exploited to create hype and attract unsuspecting ‘investors’, leading many to ask: “Did I really pay all this for a bored monkey?”

The Net as a knowledge tool (when it doesn’t steal your wallet)

Online scams, from phishing to cryptocurrencies, show the dark side of the net. Yet, we must not forget that the Internet, beyond its dangers, remains a fundamental tool for informing oneself, deepening one’s knowledge and connecting with the world. Digital innovation has given millions of people access to knowledge and opportunities that were previously unthinkable. But, like any tool, it must be used with care.

In the end, online fraudsters don’t just steal our money; they undermine trust in the Internet as a safe and reliable space for sharing information. And it is this trust that we must protect to ensure that the Internet remains a tool for growth and sustainability for all.