I looked on Snopes and the Secret Service sites, but I couldn’t find an e-mail address to forward this to. I did send it to SpamCop, whatever that is, but I was hoping for something meatier. Ah well. I’m just glad I haven’t been left out of the loop entirely.
I finally got one the other day too. I was starting to feel left out.
A Miss Toyin Oladipo is offering me $12 million, minus certain unspecified fees, if I allow her to present me as the next of kin to someone who died in Nigeria precisely 4 years ago.
Umm, yeah. I don’t think so. I’m keeping the email for its entertainment value though.
Hah! I get at least one a month, I fear I will eventually answer one of them - it’s just too damn tempting to mess with them.
With profound interest and in utmost confidence, I am soliciting your immediate assistance or co-operation as to enable us round up an opportunity within my
capability as a result of the death of one of our contractor (Beneficiary). You should not be surprised as to how I got your contact, you were highly recommended to me with the believe that you are competent, reliable, Trustworthy and confident.
I think I may start a collection, printing them out right now…
Damn! I read a really funny website about this just back before Christmas! It was a guy who replied to these scammers, and strung them along for a few weeks making them believe he was a “live one”, while using up their resources. He’d make them book hotel rooms for his arrival and arrange taxis to pick him up at the airport, or evem take silly pictures of themselves to prove they were for real.
He even took a bit of advantage of their poor grasp of English to get away with calling himself things like Mr. Butt Clencher, and so on.
There was one exchange where he decided to talk in Pirate-speak for the entire back and forth of emails (A’ye that be an interesting proposal you have there, tell me more). The scammers had no clue. Too funny! DAMN! I wish I could find the link… anyone??
I always reply to these by stating that the offer sounds exciting and I’d like to meet them in person at the nearest Secret Service location to discuss further. They never reply back to that.
First site is run by an Aussie who goes as you say under Butt Clencher but he also has C.Lench Michiques and several others that are a laugh.
At the moment I have 3 scammers dangling using the following
pseudonyms
Rev. C.Litoris of the Mission of The Engorged Phallus
James. T. Kirk. capt (ret’d) US Fleet
Stephen Hawking (asst to A. Einstein)
Believe me these Nigerians are so thick they believe anything, I had one going to a Bank in Lagos to collect $5000 which I had “sent” to cover initial release fees for $15.2m
My brother got a message from someone claiming that our cousin or uncle Glover and his family were killed in a car accident in Togo two years earlier. All we have to do is go over there and get the $6.5 million he left us.
Unfortunately for the Togoans, our last name is uncommon enough that we know there’s no cousins, especially named “Glover” and living in Togo with a wife and children.
The mind boggles with the Nigerian scammers - they sent one to our postgrad mailing list. I suppose we’re just lucky that it wasn’t adressed to Mr Postgrad
Heh, I receive at least two or three Nigerian scam emails a day. I know now not to be the president of a bank in the Ivory Coast, Nigeria, South Africa, Abidjan, Liberia, or Sierra Leone, as they have tend to have very short life expectancies and manage to have several million dollars lying around which they seem to forget about.
Honestly, though, does anyone have any idea who is running this scam and what the Government is doing about it? Apparently people must be taking the bait, since their emails are so prolific.
Bump for ebolamonkeyman, 419eater, and my favorite scamorama (links in replies above). These places have unfailingly provided me with hours of the best amusement on the web. One of the scamorama send-ups is from Jed Clampett - bout made me pee my pants.
SDMB has also provided hours of entertainment, not all of it amusing however.
I see a lot of har-har’s and yuk-yuk’s, but what exactly is the scam? I mean, yeah, who would be stupid enough to give this kind of information out to a stranger, but what happens? Do they “tap” your bank account?
