In a slightly different twist, a new scam from the country of Togo (NO,
not the
restaurant....): (Spelling and grammatical errors removed to make it more
legible):
Goes like this..... Dear <name deleted>, Your cousin who operated
a small
airline in our country has died in plane crash. It is believed some
rebels outside
the Capitol City of Togo (Lome) fired on his plane thinking he was spying
on their
positions. In our <insert Banque name here>, he has left the sum of $18
Million USD
with instructions to assist you in making arrangements to recover the
funds and bury
his body in his home state. To do this, there are some hurdles we must
jump together
quickly as his body will be buried in an umarked grave in the countryside
unless you
step forward as the next of kin to claim his body and his left behind
wealth. Some of
his wishes include distributing this among family members he has named.
To begin the process we must have you wire to us immediately
$5000 USD and
send the confirmation number to me via email or via my cell phone number
228-blah blah\
blah. When you reply that you don't have $5000 USD at hand, they quickly
negotiate
for what you do have on hand, with a promissary note (you must fax back
to them)
signed, guaranteeing that you will pay them the balance (difference) at
the conclusion of
the recovery (body and funds).
Shortly thereafter, a 'zinger' pops up... some government
official has found the need
for a copy of the death certificate, which you cannot hope to have
possession of based
on just finding out about it. You then dutifully contact the original
person who sent you an
email (claims he/she is the Banque's director of International Affairs)
and tell them of this.
They then refer you to an in-country attorney who will take this on, and
will do so very
quickly for a fee, to be paid up-front. The little games and sub-plots
keep going until
they drain everything they can from you. then inform you that the Police
have taken one
or more of your contacts into custody, and that you must come to Togo to
complete the
transactions needed or forfeit the body and the funds.
IF you go down there, you will likely disappear. Unluckily,
either way you lose a lot of
your money, and in worst case your life. These folks are inventive and
Smart, regardless of
how they appear due to spelling and grammar errors they make in their
emails and faxes.
They come up with VERY personal information regarding your family,
friends, assets, jobs,
home addresses and so on, making this twisted tale more believable.
In my case (YES, I fell for this, because it was not presented in
the usual 'do a little illegal
activity get a big payoff' light, but rather in a more 'have compassion
for the dead cousin' way).
They even had my real cousin's name (Randy) and knew he had gone to
Africa many years
ago to earn a fortune in a backwater place. They also knew he and I had
not talked or
written each other in about 3 years. They knew way too much for it to be
a scam I THOUGHT.
As with MOST bunko artists, they do research, through a variety
of resources and when
they contact you, they know more than you do about you. All toll, I wound
up losing $8,000.00
by the time they slipped up and sent the wrong name and information on
the wrong e-address.
(Almost all the players were on hotmail.co.uk or yahoo.co.uk email
addresses. They made the
mistake of sending me info that only the lawyer (Udoba_Pius@private)
should have known
from the banker's e-address (OUS_Banque@private), signed by the
'lawyer'. At that point,
I did my research (What I should have done initially) and found out all
about the variants of
the 'Nigerian Scam' and how MOST folks dumb enough to travel to the
country in question
wind up disappearing or found dead in a motel room.
I wonder (suspect) that my funds sent them may even have helped
finance illegal or
immoral activities by some group, perhaps even the Al-Qaeda or some-such.
I hope and
pray that they didn't help 9-11 to occur. This happened to me between
July 1999 and Oct-
ober of 2001. When I found all this out and questioned the various flaws,
I was told very
politely, thank goodness, that YES, the had stolen from me, so what, I
was a rich Yankee,
and too bad they didn't have the chance to slit my throat.... I reported
all the various folk's
emails and their connection to an obvious scam to their respective ISP's.
Yahoo and Hotmail
both quickly unplugged their email addresses, and the remaining ISP's
said they would be
investigating the claim and would take appropriate action against them if
warranted. Sadly,
they must not have felt so, as a ping sent to that persons reported IP
still shows activity.
even 'smart' americans can be duped.... NO, I didn't report this to the
Secret Service folk,
as I thought ONLY the Nigerian '419' scam could be reported. Now, I would
suppose it
would be too late to do so. Simply use this to help others see that MANY
different scams
are out there, including those that would seem too real to be scams....
playing on your
emotions and concerns rather than your greed.....
73 de John Jewkes W6HNC/AAA0OR OR/AAA0ID ID
On Fri, 4 Oct 2002 14:08:52 -0700 "Andrew Plato" <aplato@private>
writes:
Never underestimate the stupidity of the American public. Each election
is a profound reminder of that.
:-)
What makes me laugh is the remarkable similiarity among all these
Nigerian scams. They all look about the same. Sometimes they'll change
the country or the people involved, but without fail they always have the
same message. Even the structure and fonts used in the emails are almost
always the same.
Andrew Plato
-----Original Message-----
From: Soren.J.Winslow@private [mailto:Soren.J.Winslow@private]
Sent: Fri 10/4/2002 9:25 AM
To: steven@private; crime@private
Cc:
Subject: Re: CRIME Nigerian scam
You would think that by now people would learn.
End users will always be end users.
Soren
John Jewkes, SMD US ARMY MARS
Oregon/Idaho State Director
AAA0OR OR/AAA0ID ID/AAR0MI OR
W6HNC
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This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Fri Oct 04 2002 - 23:43:47 PDT