After receiving this email …
Attention:
This email is not in any manner directed to you, but its purposely and specifically directed to Nigeria Scam victims. . However, if you have fallen for Nigerian Scams, do not hesitate to contact us or visit our website for more details on how we can help.
We shall be waiting to hearing from you been certain that you were truly scammed by a Nigerian and you have proves to back your claims. Please read the full report at our website: http://www.nigeria-scamvictims.itgo.com/
Yours faithfully,
Brian Adams
Nigerian Government Reimbursement Committee
I was interested enough to play them along to see where it lead. so I sent this email in reply …
I have been scammed by some Nigerians – they took $30,000 from me – how can I get it back?
Mark
The reply was ….
Dear Mark,
Thank you for responding to our mail, Please find the attached Application Form and fill it appropriately. Please complete the form and return to us for an immediate processing, ensure that you provide sufficient information that might lead to the arrest of the Scam Artist.
Make sure that you attach all necessary proofs, facts and payment receipt made when transacting or communicating with the Scam Artist as this would help us to trace the true identity of the person behind the wall.
Under this act, the Federal Government of Nigeria with an effort to fight internet fraud and other immoral and illegal use of the internet, the government has also complied with the United Nations regulations in a recent meeting held at Abuja, the Federal Capital of Nigeria, to reimburse 150 scam victims. This is done to redeem the image of Nigeria both home and abroad.
We are hopeful that your Application meets the required standard and thus qualify you for the reimbursement which would be done without any problem.
Moreover, ensure that there are no discrepancies in the information you are submitting because we are going to speak with you over the phone and ask you some few technical questions as regards your application in order to authenticate your request.
If you need further assistance, please do not hesitate to contact us, and if you experience some difficulty downloading the Application Form, kindly let us know so that we can resend it in another format or you log on to our website to complete the form.
Yours faithfully,
David Bamko
Anti Nigeria Scams Dept.
www.scamsrefund.org
So, I filled in the form Scams Refund Form and waited …
It seems that even ‘those who should know better’ are fair game when it comes to the ubiquitous email scam – lawyers are being targeted for particularly high stakes, on-off counterfeit check scams, solicited via email. The California Bar Journal has provided a nice graphic to show how the scam works.
In a recent example, an unnamed and presumably embarrassed lawyer in California came within a gnats whisker of losing $200,000 when he wired $183,000 to a Hong Kong bank account after receiving a check that his bank
“I feel stupid now that I wire transferred the money before confirming that the check was good,” says the San Francisco attorney, who quickly transferred the client trust account funds because the client said he needed them urgently to pay off a supplier. “I’ve learned to be very careful when I’m contacted by e-mail by potential clients”.
What sets this apart from the simple check scams commonly seen is that the scammers used knowledge of the banking clearing system to their advantage, changing the routing numbers on the check to cause enough confusion for the scam to complete before it was found out. Banks will commonly ‘help out’ trusted lawyers, even advancing large sums of money before checks have had time to clear. It seems to me some innovation needs to occur in the clearing process worldwide before this type of scam is combated.
Read more here
This just in….
Australian victims of Nigerian online scams are greedy and should be jailed along with the Africans who relieved them of their cash, according to High Commissioner Sunday Olu Agb (Nigerian Envoy to Canberra).
“People who send their money are as guilty as those who are asking them to send the money,”
He said media coverage of Nigerian scams had given the corruption-plagued country “a bad image.” Agbi was responding to a police report that said Australians were losing A$36 Million (about $US 31,000,000) to online scams.He complained that “those who want to transact business with us are always very suspicious”.
read more in the report by the Sydney Morning Herald
I agree that greed is what drives a large number of scams – as a social engineering construct, it works very well – the knowledge that the actions that they are taking are at best immoral, at worst criminal is normally tempered by the displacement of the crime (eg. another continent) and also the large amounts of money involved and the sense that no-one will ever find out.
When the scam is exposed, the common pattern or events is disbelief, then rage and then either shame/penitence or denial (The Sunk Cost Fallacy?). The last is always the most destructive – This is exploited by scammers who, when the victim has realized his errors, will offer more scams, purportedly to enable the victim to recover some of his lost money. I have seen this many times and the 419 type scammers are the experts at this type of ’scam cascade’.
Greed, Opportunity and Low Risk drives all financial crimes – an email arriving with a request from an African official to help him ‘move’ some money out of his country to yours is just the ‘carrot’ that many people need.