Today I received this email … does anyone fall for this stuff? All caps was a nice touch.
MY GOOD FRIEND ,
MY NAME IS MR. DAVID KWAKU.I AM A RETIRED BANKER OF INTERNATIONAL COMMERCIAL BANK IN GHANA WEST AFRICA, I AM A CHRISTIAN.
I DO NOT WANT PROBLEMS BUT I JUST HOPE YOU CAN ASSIST ME, I WRITE YOU THIS LETTER IN GOOD FAITH, I HAVE A TRANSACTION OF FOUR MILLION FIVE HUNDRED AND TWENTY THOUSAND US DOLLAR:($4,520,000.00USD).
I REALIZED THIS FUND FROM BANK EXCESS PROFIT AFTER TRADING WITH THE CAPITAL SUM AND I DEPOSITED THE FUNDS IN ESCROW CALL ACCOUNT; WHERE NOBODY WILL HAVE ACCESS TO IT; EVEN THE BANK DOES NOT HAVE ACCESS TO THIS ACCOUNT BECAUSE IT CANNOT BE DEDUCTED; UNTIL AFTER THE TRANSFER.
FINALLY I DID NOT DECLARE THIS FUND TO THE BANK BEFORE MY RETIREMENT. I AM CONTACTING YOU, TO STAND AS THE BENEFICIARY OF THIS FUND BECAUSE ONLY A FOREIGNER CAN STAND AS THE BENEFICIARY, CAN I TRUST YOU TO HOLD THIS MONEY FOR ME UNTIL I COME OVER TO YOUR COUNTRY? AFTER THE TRANSFER, I WILL GIVE YOU 30% OF THE MONEY AS YOUR COMMISSION.
IF YOU ACCEPT MY OFFER, BUT IF YOU DO NOT ACCEPT THIS OFFER KINDLY FORGET THAT I CONTACTED YOU, ALL I NEED IS FOR YOU TO GET A GOOD CURRENT ACCOUNT WHERE THIS FUND CAN BE TRANSFERRED INTO AND FOR YOU TO STAND AS THE BENEFICIARY OF THE SAID AMOUNT; WITHIN THREE DAYS THE FUNDS WILL BE TRANSFERRED TO YOUR DESIGNATED BANK ACCOUNT.
THERE ARE PRACTICALLY NO RISKS INVOLVED; IT WILL BE A BANK-TO-BANK TRANSFER. I HOPE YOU UNDERSTAND MY SITUATION, I AM CRITICALLY ILL THAT IS WHY I CONTACTED YOU TO FINALIZE THIS TRANSACTION TO ENABLE ME HAVE A VERY GOOD TREATMENT.
MAY GOD BLESS YOU AND YOUR FAMILY. I WAIT YOUR URGENT REPLY
BEST REGARDS,
MR. DAVID KWAKU.
Google “Nigerian scam victims.” Yes. Yes they do. Here’s the story of one who was bilked AUS$300,000 over a four-year period.
I read recently that the writing style of these emails is, despite appearances, carefully chosen. The scammers are, after all, fishing for the gullible. Anyone who responds to these semi-literate, laughably unprofessional screeds demonstrates, just by doing so, that they are a great potential mark. If the scammers used better forgeries, they would be more likely to pull in people who would sniff out the scam half-way through the process. So good English is, in fact, inefficient.
I don’t know how true this is - it *may *be true that the effect of this style is to produce a “better” selection of marks, but that doesn’t mean it was planned that way. This style obviously works to some extent, and if it works well enough there’s no incentive to try more authentic styles. I doubt anyone’s run a randomised controlled trial.
The ones that probably have more success are those that closely mimic real bank communications, complete with logos, colors, layouts, and even an authentic [EMAIL=“donotreply@bankname.com”]donotreply@bankname.com address. It takes a sharp eye and suspicious mind to not take these at face value, at least until you realize they’re phishing the hell out of you and the actual links go to obviously bogus sites (like www.bankofamerica.fugyou.it.) It’s easy to catch and dismiss the ones from banks you’ve never dealt with, but in that tiny overlap of bank and customer, they can be deadly. I’ve almost been bit by a couple of matches over the years. (Solution: I use a bank so small no one would bother trying to phish with it.)
But yeah, the Nigerian scam and all its variations… you’d have to be pretty new to the internet (if not the western world) to fall for those.
Very good point, and it supports the contention I recently made in another thread about con games - that you can’t cheat an honest person. Only those looking to get something unwarranted/unearned from a deal fall for things like the pigeon drop and these scams, and the “I am a very dumb person asking you to help me smuggle money out of my country” approach no doubt accounts for 99% of its success these days.
Not just that, but some of them end up traveling to Nigeria which, from what I understand, is pretty rough and law enforcement is somewhat law when it comes to the scams.
I know a guy who has fallen for every multi-level marketing, vacuum sales, western union wire and internet scam out there.
He was actually in a Western Union office ready to send off money and the clerk wouldn’t do it.
A cousin of mine [older] was recently complaining about a ton of problems she was having with her laptop. After some back and forth questions, she told me that at one point Time Warner locked her out of it and demanded $150 to unlock it.
Turns out it was just a victim of one of those scams where she got a random call from someone saying they were from TWC and she had a ‘virus’ and ‘here download this’ and luckily her husband hung up on the guy when they asked for money. She still thinks it was TWC, I told her to throw out her 6 year old laptop and buy a new one cuz I’m not interested in babysitting it for half a day while all the malware scanners run and a Geek Squad or a local computer service will probably be half the amount of a new one so it’s probably a good time to upgrade it.
Microsoft has studied this very question. Why do Nigerian Scammers Say They are from Nigeria? [PDF]
The paper is long on math and short on proofreading, but it makes a convincing case for why the Nigerian scam has such longevity.
My first instinct was to trust him because he addressed me as “MY GOOD FRIEND”. Why wouldn’t I trust my good friend?
I know a man who has a first class degree from Oxford. About 1990 (that is, before the web, although the internet was active) he got such a letter from, I think, Nigeria. He fell for it, hook line and sinker. He blew about $150,000 on it and also went to Africa. It cost him his house and, eventually, his wife. Finally, with only his pension, he moved back to his former wife, although I don’t think he remarried. She insisted on a power of attorney over his finances. Then she died of cancer, maybe five years ago. He moved in with his daughter. But she didn’t get a power of attorney and he started up with the scam again, still believing it would pay off. His daughter threw him out and has lost track of him. He must be close to 80. He has had MS for at least 50 years and, although the physical manifestations have been minimal, I think it has affected his judgment. My physician DIL tells me that is entirely possible.
I have a simple rule: if an email from an unknown source asks me to sign on to a web site, I delete it.
Why not indeed? you could make over $1.3m dollars. Go for it…
On the other hand, you could have some fun like this guy…
More likely, he simply couldn’t admit to himself that he’d been scammed like this for most of his life. People in general can be extremely stubborn when it comes to accepting the truth.
Another dude who fell for it:
Right here on this board, several years ago, choie blogged her observations as she watched a neighbor get fleeced like this.
My Grandpa got fleeced by some guys who claimed to be fixing his roof (which had nothing wrong with it), and charged about £20,000 for the privilege. They did bring a ladder with them, but according to the neighbours, they didn’t even bother climbing it.
Grandpa used to live in Nigeria, and was, before he got dementia, well known for giving people financial advice, and had pretty a substantial investment portfolio. He would have fallen for it hook, line, sinker, rod, bait box and probably boat as well.
What people forget is that scams don’t have to work on everyone. They only have to work on 2-6% of their victims to be successful. That’s the " break even/profit" point for telemarketers and it can be extrapolated to other frauds.
There’s also the fact that while they won’t admit it, most people are not financially sophisticated. They barely understand common financial transactions so anything beyond that will overwhelm many and look for someone who they believe that they can trust to help them. If they feel that they can trust that person, they will rarely question them or their motives.
Finally, most people believe that luck plays or will play a large portion in their financial planning. If they are offered what appears to be a “lucky break” where they won’t have to work and save for decades to reach prosperity, many will leap at it no matter ludicrous it sounds to many others.
People fall for this hundreds of times a day; there are subtle variations though. The person whose “husband/wife” needs airfare to come to the country to meet them. There’s the “you need to provide me with the WU tracking number so PayPal can release your refund/money” one. There’s the “I’m paying the guy who just called me & fixed my PC” one. The “I’m buying a puppy and I need to send them money for shipping first” one.
The victims are almost always either older and sheltered or young and naive. Grifters are scum, preying on the innocent around us on a daily (if not hourly) basis.
Quatloos! is a blog which talks about a lot of these 419 scams.
In case you’re not aware of how it works, the scammer slowly reels the mark in. They develop a rapport with the person and then say they just need a small amount of money for a bribe and then the money will be released. The mark sends the money, but the scammer needs a bit more to bribe someone else or get it through customs or something else. The mark doesn’t want to lose the money he’s already sent, so he keeps sending in the larger and larger amounts the scammer keeps asking for. Eventually, he’s sent so much money that he can’t stop. He needs the final millions to replace all the other money he’s already sent.
Speaking of grifters and scammers … A while back I went to the DIA (Detroit Institute of Art - museum) in downtown Detroit. Just outside, I was approached by a young man who said his car was out of gas and he just needed a few bucks to get gas and drive home. I did not bite.
Over a year later, I was there again and the SAME guy approached me again with the EXACT SAME STORY. This scheme must work on some people, I guess.
My husband is so gullible I think all the conmen know him! Last year he fell victim to a “payday” loan scheme. He found a message in his emails, it said that he would qualify for a big loan.
He went to the site just to check it out, and then proceeded to give them all our information!! Our names, address, social security numbers, and bank account details.
Lets just say, the next 6 months were terrible. I am almost positive the scam was coming from India. Day and night, night and day they would call. Then, they started taking money from our accounts :mad:
My husband pretended he did not give them the information. Really?? These people would call his work, complaining to his boss.
They would call me and tell me I needed to send them money, or I would be arrested. :dubious:
The only thing left for us to do was to file police reports, meet with the bank, close down our whole account, and open a new one.
They still call every now and then. We must be on everyones “sucker” list.
Bumping because a Cameroonian national pled guilty to bank fraud yesterday. I listen to streaming audio from a station local to that bank while I’m working and it’s their top news story for today.
Namatinga admitted that he carried out the fraud from about February to April 2019, by falsely representing to the bank that the secretary of one of the bank’s customers requested that cashier’s checks be sent to Namatinga’s fraudulent company known as Keiko San Products Alimenticious, LLC. Namatinga is the registered agent for Keiko, and the four checks were mailed to his home address. Once the checks were deposited into Keiko bank accounts, Namatinga then transferred money from those accounts to his personal account or withdrew cash from those accounts. The loss to the bank was approximately $140,000.