The 419 scam is where someone sends an e-mail like this: "I wish to transfer €1 million to the UK but don't know how to. Please send me €5000 for expenses, and I will transfer the money to you until I get there. You can keep a third of it as payment." There are many embellishments: famous names, conspiracies, long stories of woe, that sort of thing. If anyone does as the scammer requests, they pay €5000 and do not get anything in return. There are many variants.
The scam was originally associated with Nigerian fraudsters, and the name "419 scam" is widely described as having arisen from a numbered section in Nigerian criminal codes corresponding to the fraud. However, the scam has gone worldwide. When I last found out where one of the 419 e-mails sent to me had originated (the response addresses can be checked here, for example), it was a city in north Iran.
The scam's spread can be represented in the theory of technological transfer. An innovator comes up with the idea, and shows it is profitable. To maximise profits they work internationally, increasing its exposure to potential imitators in doing so. They cannot protect the basic idea, so other people copy it and start to do the same thing. They "learn by doing", picking up the skills of handling potential victims. The spread is technology specific (the most widespread version of the scam uses computers), knowledge specific (literacy dependent for a start), and institution dependent (requiring a weak legal code).
The theory, like many in the economics of knowledge, could readily be devised by a non-academic examining their own relationship with technology and education.
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