In its latest incarnation, 'FBI Director' endorses the Nigerian letter
Filed under: Ripoffs and Scams, Technology, Travel, Fraud, Buyer Beware
For decades, even before the availability of easy and low-cost mass marketing via email, the Nigerian letter has existed to try to separate us from our money.As silly as some of these letters are -- with their outlandish claims (a nation's leader has chosen you to hold his money), grandiose promises (you get 10% of his $25 million) and broken English (wiring your fund to the Bank informations) -- an awful lot of people lose any awful lot of money to this scam.
One of the latest, most amusing and most distressing variants delivers you an email that appears to be coming from the FBI. Even a moderately skeptical, slightly word-challenged reader ought to realize this is bunk.
But way too many people are going to reason otherwise. "Hey, this came from the FBI, signed by Director Robert S. Mueller III himself. I might really be able to come into free money." Sad, but it really happens. So, please, please, please, if you get an email like this, do not believe it, do not send your personal information, do not become a victim of this very old and very tired scam.
Instead, let's use this opportunity to educate about the Nigerian letter (aka 419 fraud, named after the section of the Nigerian criminal code dedicated to it). Over the course of your email life you likely will receive dozens of these letters, most of which will hopefully drift harmlessly into your spam folders.
If this warning comes too late, don't hide in shame, do what you can to out the crooks. Lodge a complaint with the Internet Crime Complaint Center. And consider both learning more and complaining to the Nigerian Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, which is, of course, at ground zero of this long-running scam.
Not every Nigerian letter will involve someone from Nigeria. Some will come from the Ivory Coast or other African nations. Some will appear to involve people from Hong Kong. The scenarios really could involve anyone from anywhere.
But here's the scenario: Someone will contact you expressing the hope you can help them out of a jam by holding some money for them. You will be richly rewarded for your good deed. As a good faith gesture you need to send along some relatively small (by comparison to what you'll be receiving) sum.
If you fall for it and send the payment in round one you'll likely be hit for another round. In the worst cases, they keep pressing and pressing and pressing until finally pushing the victim to fly to another country with the last installment before you get to collect your princely payout.
Sadly, I've met highly educated people, who to my shock, fell for this to that extent -- actually flying to Africa. One of them told me that all he wanted to do was help out the man who had written him since his situation seemed so dire as described in that first email.
Have you ever been tempted by one of these emails? Do you read them for fun? Have you or anyone you know actually responded to one, or actually sent money? Please post a comment and let me know.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
3-10-2009 @ 9:51AM
bob said...
i probably get 10 or so of these a week a hit reply telling the sender to go screw himself they are so blantly silly anyone who falls for that crap is so blinded by greed they deserve to get taken
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3-10-2009 @ 10:08AM
mogirl5555 said...
The original Nigerian scam is still running, I still get e-mails on a dating site where a guy writes me and you can tell that they are not originally from America. I contact the dating site and ask them to investigate, when I go back in a couple of days, his account has been deleted. The bad thing is they just come back on under a new screen name.
There were a lot of women that fell for this scam. There was a support group on yahoo not long after this first started. I had refused to accept the money order he asked me to cash. One of them was for $13K, I just laughed and told him my bank would never cash that for me, as I had never had that much money in my account at any time. Soon after, I reported him to the dating site and his account was soon deleted. One of the pictures he put up that was supposedly him was of Ty Pennington.
I get about 10 of these a day. I just delete them. One thing, anything that is supposedly from the FBI, would have a .gov at the end of the address. All Govt agencies have .gov or .mil for the military services. I worked for the Dept of Defense for almost 32 years before I took early retirement last year.
I have been getting a new version of these letters and they really piss me off, excuse the language. They write that they are either Army or Marines assigned to Iran or Iraq and they had come across some of Sadaam Hussein's hidden wealth and need a way to get it to the United States. They are the same as the other letters, they ask for your personal information with the promise of like 10-20% to for helping them. It upsets me to see these scammers using the military to try and get this scam accomplished. What people need to know is that any military member that tries to do this would be court martialed, it's against the law.
Oh, before I quit boring all of you, I have had some of these scammers also contact me on yahoo IM. They just go through yahoo members personal info until they find one that they want to try and scam.
Ok, I'm done. Hope I didn't bore you all too much with my little novel. Sometimes when I start writing, it's hard to stop. Must be due to the fact that I was a technical writer for the Marine Corps for 24 years.
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3-10-2009 @ 9:42AM
hwh said...
Having some apts. for rent and advertising on Craig's List, I am receiving responses allegedly from the UK, looking to rent, willing to pay in excess of the rental amount, etc. The usual double talk, poor English, etc. E-mails are originating from the US. Don't know exactly how the scam works, but we know it is a scam. Usually requesting a copy of their visa for an extended stay in the USA stops any further communication.
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3-10-2009 @ 10:13AM
Mitch Lipka said...
Thanks for writing in about your experience. As you point out, government emails typically come with a .gov extension. Sadly, the scammers have gotten sophisticated enough that they can now send emails that appear to be from legitimate, official addresses.
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3-18-2009 @ 10:12AM
Jack said...
A scam is going on with myspace as well. I'm not sure how it works, but I'll get a message from a female stating that they really like my profile, how I'm their perfect match etc... and then ask me to call them on what is obviously an out of country number. Can they do something with my number if I do call? Either way I do not call. Has anyone else received any of these?
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3-19-2009 @ 12:45PM
ELIZABETH said...
I GET DOZENS OF THIS GARBAGE IN MY SPAM-IT IS SO LUDICROUS, HOW COULD ANYBODY BE SO GULLIBLE? WHY CAN'T THE FBI DO SOMETHING ABOUT THIS?
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4-28-2009 @ 4:28PM
Larrikin said...
Almost a year ago on a Saturday evening I opened an Email from my Son, it was a cry for help-stranded in London, my passport, cellphone and credit cards stolen, I need to pay th hotel bill my flight leaves am early had to fly over on urgent business. Can you wire me $3500.00 to the Western Union Ofice here with a phone number. I figure the time stamp on the email means he must still be at the console, so i write, what hotel are you in? I will pay the bill from here and arrange transport to which airport. I added how is doris holding up she must be terrified? The reply is Dad please just wire the money, Doris is ok but scared. Since my kids were babies we had code words we used due to the business I was in. Well we have no doris in our family-BaHHHHHHm flag is up. I called his cell he told me someone stole his access code to Yahoo business account on a wireless access in a StarBucks, 10 minutes after leaving StarBucks he could not sign on, they changed his password and stole client info & bank info. Thats how they got my name and info. He did lose some money but it was recovered.
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