Latest news with #MariaKonnikova
The Star
24-05-2025
- Business
- The Star
UBS Asian Investment Conference in Hong Kong to feature Simone Biles and Maria Konnikova
Maria Konnikova, a renowned author, psychologist and poker player, will discuss uncertainty at next week's Asian Investment Conference (AIC) in Hong Kong, a topic that is certain to be at the front of mind for attendees of the event, hosted by UBS. She will be among the dozens of policymakers, economists, and robotics scientists to speak at the AIC, which was launched 28 years ago by Credit Suisse, now part of UBS. Niall Macleod, the curator of the event and UBS' head of product management for the Asia-Pacific region, said the conference would open with discussions on economics, trade and political issues, before moving into strategies for managing uncertainty. Do you have questions about the biggest topics and trends from around the world? Get the answers with SCMP Knowledge, our new platform of curated content with explainers, FAQs, analyses and infographics brought to you by our award-winning team. 'What are the tools you can utilise to try and handle the things you can't see, the things you can't necessarily predict?' he said. The political and economic uncertainties are far greater than normal, he said. 'It's providing a real challenge to investors,' he added. In early April, US President Donald Trump imposed sweeping tariffs on all its trading partners, with China facing the heaviest duties. Global markets tumbled on the news and China applied its own tariffs on US imports. Last week, China and the US agreed to a 90-day truce on tariffs. China said it would lower duties on US imports to 10 per cent from 125 per cent, while the US would cut its tariffs to 30 per cent from 145 per cent. Macleod said when he started planning the event six months ago, he was unsure whether tariffs and trade would still be relevant. 'Six months on, it is one of the key debates,' he said. The AIC was expected to welcome more than 3,500 participants – including institutional investors, companies, ultra-high-net-worth individuals and family offices – up from over 3,000 last year, UBS said. The programme also includes a session focused on wealth management in Singapore ahead of the main conference, which runs from May 27 to 30 in Hong Kong. About 80 speakers – including Pascal Lamy, the former head of the World Trade Organization; Raghuram Rajan, a former governor of the Reserve Bank of India; and Olivier Blanchard, a former chief economist at the International Monetary Fund – will address topics ranging from economics and geopolitics to artificial intelligence. Simone Biles, the famous American gymnast, will also speak at the event, on the topic of resilience. 'When you think about the hours and hours and hours she's put in to become this iconic, successful gymnast, she certainly inspires me,' Macleod said. 'When you look at the uncertainties in the economy and how you deal with uncertainty, a lot of it is about being resilient,' he said. For the latest news from the South China Morning Post download our mobile app. Copyright 2025.
South China Morning Post
22-05-2025
- Business
- South China Morning Post
UBS' Asian Investment Conference to feature Simone Biles, Pascal Lamy, Maria Konnikova
Maria Konnikova, a renowned author, psychologist and poker player, will discuss uncertainty at next week's Asian Investment Conference (AIC) in Hong Kong, a topic that is certain to be at the front of mind for attendees of the event, hosted by UBS. She will be among the dozens of policymakers, economists, and robotics scientists to speak at the AIC, which was launched 28 years ago by Credit Suisse, now part of UBS. Niall Macleod, the curator of the event and UBS' head of product management for the Asia-Pacific region, said the conference would open with discussions on economics, trade and political issues, before moving into strategies for managing uncertainty. 'What are the tools you can utilise to try and handle the things you can't see, the things you can't necessarily predict?' he said. The political and economic uncertainties are far greater than normal, he said. 'It's providing a real challenge to investors', he added.
Yahoo
03-03-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
The centuries-old scam still fooling thousands every year
It is hard to imagine a more clichéd scam than a down-on-his-luck Nigerian prince emailing strangers overseas for a trifling sum. But the textbook swindle – known as an 'advance fee' scam – still ensnares thousands of people every year. In the first half of last year more than 8,000 cases of this kind of fraud were reported in Britain, according to banking trade body UK Finance, which said victims lost almost £16m during that period to the scam. But few would realise in hindsight they were at the sharp end of an ancient trick that has lost people untold amounts of money throughout history, and that shows no signs of dying out. Advance fee fraud works by a scammer contacting their victim out of the blue, asking for a small amount of money or personal information, in return for a large payday. Once the fraudster receives their first ill-gotten payment, they spin an increasingly elaborate story designed to keep the cash flowing for as long as possible. Scammers use a huge variety of cover stories to hide their nefarious intentions. But none has stuck in the public consciousness more than that of the Nigerian prince, who is known to promise victims a share of a vast fortune in reward for victims lending him a few thousands pounds. While many will assume the scam was born amid the dawn of the internet and email messaging, it is actually a deception that is centuries old. During the early 20th century, newspapers attracted millions of readers and abounded with advertisements – sold by the inch – for everything from no-nonsense business opportunities to the latest innovations in scientific quackery. One day a new advertisement appeared in a number of American papers written by one 'Prince Morrison', who claimed to be a member of a noble Nigerian family. He wrote that he was in search of pen-pals generous enough to send him $4 and a pair of trousers they no longer needed. The prince made assurances he would handsomely reward the readers with treasures including ivory, emeralds and diamonds in exchange for their friendship. According to The Confidence Game, a book by journalist Maria Konnikova that investigates the origins of the scam, the money poured in. The newspapers were soon inundated with angry complaints from readers saying they had not received the promised riches. Once fraud was suspected, an investigation by United States authorities revealed the true identity of the prince to be a 14-year-old American boy. His status as a minor prevented further legal action and his name remains a mystery to this day. But the so-called 'Nigerian prince scam' had been born – and is still being replicated more than a century later. This was the 'first reference I could find to an actual Nigerian prince', says Konnikova, adding that the scam was 'huge' and that hundreds of people are thought to have fallen for it at the time. 'This is one of the single oldest scams in history,' she adds. A precursor scam stole money from victims by purporting to raise money on behalf of a wealthy person wrongly imprisoned in Spain who would more than repay them on release. 'That's essentially also the way the Nigerian prince scam operates,' Konnikova says. 'Especially with the Nigerian prince scam, the human tendency is to want something for nothing or for very little. In the original scam that kid pulled at the heartstrings and [that got] people emotional and making impulsive decisions.' An early explanation of the scam involving a fake prisoner in Spain appears in the 1834 memoir of Eugène François Vidocq, the French criminal turned forensic investigator, who was an inspiration behind works by Victor Hugo, Honoré de Balzac and Edgar Allen Poe. Versions of the trick can be found referenced as far back as the early 1700s in Britain. They were not initially ruled to be criminal acts, until laws against fraud were eventually passed around the turn of the 19th century. Mike Britton, of tech firm Abnormal Security, says he has seen many recent cases of people falling victim to Nigerian prince-style scams. 'Attackers continue to reuse these [scams] because they are extremely effective. There are still people today who fall for this type of attack. 'Surprisingly, a lot of people claim to have lost money from the Nigerian prince scam even as recently as a year or two ago.' Scammers are now much better equipped to target their victims, says Britton, as opposed to sending out thousands of emails and hoping to catch an unsuspecting person. 'They may have sent the email out to 10 million people and if they get 10 of them to respond and cough up money it was a worthy investment of their time. Now the attacker doesn't need to send out 10 million emails, they can pick and choose their targets a little bit better and automate that.' Advances in technology have also changed the scam. 'In the early days it was extremely poorly written,' says Britton. 'It was poorly designed and that was the nature of email attacks in general because [scammers] didn't have tools like ChatGPT or other things like that. So if you did get one, you'd likely realise it couldn't be true.' But now scammers 'can leverage artificial intelligence to craft the profile of who [they are] looking at and trying to attack. The old method was really to 'pray and spray''. Artificial intelligence has been used to target consumers in Britain by recreating the voice of trusted figures in 'deep fakes' to promote phoney investment opportunities. In 2023, personal finance expert Martin Lewis branded a video that circulated online and which featured his voice supporting a scam as 'frightening'. Faudsters have also been known to clone the voices of close friends and family of victims in telephone calls, often purporting to be in distress and needing money urgently. Despite evidence suggesting the infamous scam originated in the US, Britton says many email scams can be traced back to Nigeria, which is a 'hotbed' of activity. The country has a large, tech-savvy and youthful English-speaking population as well as better internet connectivity than neighbouring African nations. The US's Internet Crime Complaint Centre, housed within the FBI, reported almost $2.5bn (£2bn) in losses tied to Nigerian-originating cybercrime in 2020. 'There are a lot of reasons for this,' says Britton. 'Part of it is a lot of socio-economic factors [such as] high unemployment, low oversight and care by the government and police. To them it's like, 'I am not going to crack down on it because they're victimising somebody in the US or somewhere else. They're putting food on the table and not doing petty crime impacting our own citizens.'' In December nearly 800 people were arrested by Nigerian law enforcement following a raid on a building believed to be a hub for fraudsters who lured victims into cryptocurrency scams with offers of romance. The suspects were not all Nigerian, with 148 Chinese and 40 Filipino nationals among the 792 arrests. Scammers originating from West Africa are increasingly using 'sextortion' tactics on victims, according to US law enforcement agencies. This form of blackmail involves scammers using intimate images of victims to pressure them into handing over money. In July, Meta closed some 63,000 Nigerian-based Facebook accounts involved in the scams. So-called 'Yahoo Boys' – a network of cybercriminals based in Nigeria – are behind numerous sextortion attacks in Western countries. Broaden your horizons with award-winning British journalism. Try The Telegraph free for 1 month with unlimited access to our award-winning website, exclusive app, money-saving offers and more.
Telegraph
03-03-2025
- Business
- Telegraph
The centuries-old scam still fooling thousands every year
It is hard to imagine a more clichéd scam than a down-on-his-luck Nigerian prince emailing strangers overseas for a trifling sum. But the textbook swindle – known as an 'advance fee' scam – still ensnares thousands of people every year. In the first half of last year more than 8,000 cases of this kind of fraud were reported in Britain, according to banking trade body UK Finance, which said victims lost almost £16m during that period to the scam. But few would realise in hindsight they were at the sharp end of an ancient trick that has lost people untold amounts of money throughout history, and that shows no signs of dying out. Advance fee fraud works by a scammer contacting their victim out of the blue, asking for a small amount of money or personal information, in return for a large payday. Once the fraudster receives their first ill-gotten payment, they spin an increasingly elaborate story designed to keep the cash flowing for as long as possible. Scammers use a huge variety of cover stories to hide their nefarious intentions. But none has stuck in the public consciousness more than that of the Nigerian prince, who is known to promise victims a share of a vast fortune in reward for victims lending him a few thousands pounds. While many will assume the scam was born amid the dawn of the internet and email messaging, it is actually a deception that is centuries old. $4 and a pair of trousers During the early 20th century, newspapers attracted millions of readers and abounded with advertisements – sold by the inch – for everything from no-nonsense business opportunities to the latest innovations in scientific quackery. One day a new advertisement appeared in a number of American papers written by one 'Prince Morrison', who claimed to be a member of a noble Nigerian family. He wrote that he was in search of pen-pals generous enough to send him $4 and a pair of trousers they no longer needed. The prince made assurances he would handsomely reward the readers with treasures including ivory, emeralds and diamonds in exchange for their friendship. According to The Confidence Game, a book by journalist Maria Konnikova that investigates the origins of the scam, the money poured in. The newspapers were soon inundated with angry complaints from readers saying they had not received the promised riches. Once fraud was suspected, an investigation by United States authorities revealed the true identity of the prince to be a 14-year-old American boy. His status as a minor prevented further legal action and his name remains a mystery to this day. But the so-called 'Nigerian prince scam' had been born – and is still being replicated more than a century later. This was the 'first reference I could find to an actual Nigerian prince', says Konnikova, adding that the scam was 'huge' and that hundreds of people are thought to have fallen for it at the time. 'This is one of the single oldest scams in history,' she adds. A precursor scam stole money from victims by purporting to raise money on behalf of a wealthy person wrongly imprisoned in Spain who would more than repay them on release. 'That's essentially also the way the Nigerian prince scam operates,' Konnikova says. 'Especially with the Nigerian prince scam, the human tendency is to want something for nothing or for very little. In the original scam that kid pulled at the heartstrings and [that got] people emotional and making impulsive decisions.' An early explanation of the scam involving a fake prisoner in Spain appears in the 1834 memoir of Eugène François Vidocq, the French criminal turned forensic investigator, who was an inspiration behind works by Victor Hugo, Honoré de Balzac and Edgar Allen Poe. Versions of the trick can be found referenced as far back as the early 1700s in Britain. They were not initially ruled to be criminal acts, until laws against fraud were eventually passed around the turn of the 19th century. 'People are still falling for this' Mike Britton, of tech firm Abnormal Security, says he has seen many recent cases of people falling victim to Nigerian prince-style scams. 'Attackers continue to reuse these [scams] because they are extremely effective. There are still people today who fall for this type of attack. 'Surprisingly, a lot of people claim to have lost money from the Nigerian prince scam even as recently as a year or two ago.' Scammers are now much better equipped to target their victims, says Britton, as opposed to sending out thousands of emails and hoping to catch an unsuspecting person. 'They may have sent the email out to 10 million people and if they get 10 of them to respond and cough up money it was a worthy investment of their time. Now the attacker doesn't need to send out 10 million emails, they can pick and choose their targets a little bit better and automate that.' Advances in technology have also changed the scam. 'In the early days it was extremely poorly written,' says Britton. 'It was poorly designed and that was the nature of email attacks in general because [scammers] didn't have tools like ChatGPT or other things like that. So if you did get one, you'd likely realise it couldn't be true.' But now scammers 'can leverage artificial intelligence to craft the profile of who [they are] looking at and trying to attack. The old method was really to 'pray and spray''. Artificial intelligence has been used to target consumers in Britain by recreating the voice of trusted figures in 'deep fakes' to promote phoney investment opportunities. In 2023, personal finance expert Martin Lewis branded a video that circulated online and which featured his voice supporting a scam as 'frightening'. Faudsters have also been known to clone the voices of close friends and family of victims in telephone calls, often purporting to be in distress and needing money urgently. 'Yahoo Boys' Despite evidence suggesting the infamous scam originated in the US, Britton says many email scams can be traced back to Nigeria, which is a 'hotbed' of activity. The country has a large, tech-savvy and youthful English-speaking population as well as better internet connectivity than neighbouring African nations. The US's Internet Crime Complaint Centre, housed within the FBI, reported almost $2.5bn (£2bn) in losses tied to Nigerian-originating cybercrime in 2020. 'There are a lot of reasons for this,' says Britton. 'Part of it is a lot of socio-economic factors [such as] high unemployment, low oversight and care by the government and police. To them it's like, 'I am not going to crack down on it because they're victimising somebody in the US or somewhere else. They're putting food on the table and not doing petty crime impacting our own citizens.'' In December nearly 800 people were arrested by Nigerian law enforcement following a raid on a building believed to be a hub for fraudsters who lured victims into cryptocurrency scams with offers of romance. The suspects were not all Nigerian, with 148 Chinese and 40 Filipino nationals among the 792 arrests. Scammers originating from West Africa are increasingly using 'sextortion' tactics on victims, according to US law enforcement agencies. This form of blackmail involves scammers using intimate images of victims to pressure them into handing over money.
