Experts at SophosLabs inform about the discovery that advanced fee fraud scammers are using the business networking website LinkedIn to try and find potential victims.

Advanced fee fraud, also known as 419 scams after the relevant section of the Nigerian penal code, are a common sight in many computer users’ email inboxes. Typically they claim to offer a small fortune in the form of a lottery win or inheritance, in exchange for an individual’s banking details or payment of a “handling charge”.

Scammers obstructed by corporate anti-spam defenses at the email gateway have now turned to sites like LinkedIn to try and lay traps for unwary business workers.

Scammers obstructed by corporate anti-spam defenses at the email gateway have now turned to sites like LinkedIn to try and lay traps for unwary business workers.

Earlier this week, a 419 scam was sent via the LinkedIn website claiming to come from a 22-year-old woman living in the Ivory Coast who has been passed $6.5 million by her deceased father.

Part of the message reads:

Before the death of my father on the 12th December 2007,in a private hospital here in Abidjan,he called me secretly to his bed side and told me that he kept a sum of $6.500 000 (six million five hundred thousand United States Dollars) in a bank in Abidjan Cote D’ivoire. He used my name as the next of kin in deposit of the fund.He also explained to me that it was because of this money he was poisoned by his business partner and that i should seek for foreign partner in a country of my choice where i would transfer this money and use it for investment purpose.

The message goes on to request bank account information and implore the recipient and potential victim to reply to a Yahoo! email address within seven days.

“419 scammers may be hoping that the typical professional on LinkedIn may have more disposal income than the archetypal MySpace or Facebook user, and is potentially a bigger catch. Furthermore, whereas many are used to receiving dangerous spam in their inbox, ” said Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant at Sophos. “Web 2.0 sites like LinkedIn and Facebook give strangers the ability to contact you, without the defensive umbrella of your corporate anti-spam filter. Computer users should be on their guard about any unsolicited email as it could be from a cyber con-man.”