Since a few months and for the first time, the internet "Advance Fee Frauders" have found
(i) a new easy target, the inventors, as well as
(ii) a rich picking ground, which consists of the websites that list their inventions and which were created by non-profit organizations like IFIA with the specific aim to help inventors find business partners. These frauders have already raided our website www.1000inventions.com , a unique virtual market place with 1,000+ inventions from 100+ countries for sale or licencing. We know that the websites of some similar USA inventor's organizations have recently also been the target of the same frauders.

Taking advantage of the inventors desperate desire to sell their inventions, an incredibly huge sum (ranging from US $35 million to 125 million) is offered to them in exchange for the patent rights on their invention as listed on the website. Many innocent inventors have fallen into the trap and have exchanged e-mails and phone calls with the frauders, some have "negotiated" and signed an e-mail "Agreement".

The author of the e-mails which are sent to the inventors, pretends to be a Japanese living in Tokyo. He calls himself Fuji Tanaka or, in other cases, Dewa Kizito¹ . Needless to say, all these are fake names, therefore we can expect other names to come up in the future. The frauder is also a good forger, he does not hesitate, if requested, to provide the inventor with a copy of "his" Japanese passport page with "his" portrait!

The only address given by this Number One contact is an e-mail and a mobile phone. The e-mail is most often a "yahoo" free webmail services address, which is never used by any important business person, and which, in this case, traces back to Lagos, Nigeria, the place of the notorious internet trade frauders. The code number of the telephone (+882 16) is not that of Japan (+81). It is the code number of an advanced mobile satellite system, "Thuraya", based in Abu Dhabi, in the United Arab Emirates. More important, Japan does not even figure among the countries covered by Thuraya. So, the so-called Tanaka (or Kizito) is obviously not phoning from Japan. In fact nobody knows from where he speaks on the phone. We have even reasons to question he being a Japanese².

Tanaka (or Kizito) says that he has a client for your invention whom he describes as an important Japanese entrepreneur. The names he gives are fake names, not even Japanese names of persons³. A shrewd way indeed to avoid problems with genuine Japanese entrepreuners!

In brief, there is no Japanese entrepreneur.
No investor.
No money.
There is not a cent in Tokyo or elsewhere!

The trick is to convince the innocent inventor that the millions of dollars that were promised will be sent to him in cash by air charter from Tokyo to a European destination (Dublin, very exceptionally Madrid). There, the inventor will be dealing with a new contact,

who is said to be a "diplomat" - sometimes this "diplomat" is said to be from Barbados or from Jamaica. Then the inventor is informed that his millions of dollars will be given to him only after he has paid himself from his own pocket (to the so-called "diplomat") the expenses involved in the transport and custom duties of the parcel containing the bank notes. The amount of this "advance fee" varies. It is no less than US $16 thousand, but several inventors have been asked much more (up to 32 thousand Euro, that is around US $38 thousand) ⁴.

The inventor has to pay himself his travel ticket to Dublin, and his hotel accomodation.

Once in Dublin, the inventor is in the hands of the so-called "diplomat". This "diplomat" (and his assistant) use different fake names, but we know for sure that these men have at least one thing in common: both are English speaking black Africans. The inventor gives them the agreed "advance fee", a copy of the main page(s) of his passport, and signs a paper which authorizes the "diplomat" to retrieve the famous parcel supposed to contain the tens of millions of US dollars promised to the inventor. Different scenarios are possible thereafter, one being that the inventor is informed that some unexpected "problem" came up… He is then asked suddenly to wait a few more days in Dublin, the time for the problem to be settled, and once again has to pay an important sum which is supposed to cover the new expenses… and the story goes on…

To conclude. Forgetting all the rest, and speaking only about money (and supposing that the inventor returns home safely…!), the scenario is always the same: the inventor doesn't get the money that was promised to him; instead, the frauders steal his money.