I lived in Hawaii pre-Internet. Back then, these scams weren’t yet well know. One Hawaiian millionaire fell for it but went public in the newspaper with his story. He felt ashamed but wanted to warn others.
Also pre-Internet in my early days in Thailand, I was acquainted with a wealthy Chinese-Thai businessman who used to get Nigerian-scam letters in the mail fairly often. Funny thing is these letters never carried a postmark. The stamps had not been canceled. This led him to suspect collusion on the part of some Thai postal authorities even if it was just the mailman.
Yep I encountered my first Russian scammer on a dating site. That was a while back though. Recently on the dating sites I’ve noticed a lot of attention from supposed Doms, who didn’t wait long before hatching schemes, but also from users in Thailand, who are super lovey dovey but seem to be taking their time before getting obvious.
It amuses me to play along and test their own limits of credulity.
The Nigerian scam has been around for a long time. Back in the 1980’s, a guy in New Hampshire got scammed-he happened to own a huge tire dump. The scam was-a bunch of Nigerian “businessmen” convinced him that he could sell the tires as used in Nigeria-he would ship them to Nigeria, where they wold be patched and sold. Sound god? Only he had to “front some money” to his trusty Nigerian partners. Needless to say, he got scammed…shortly later, his mound of tires caught fire!
A co-worker and I very nearly fell for one. Her brother’s AOL e-mail account was hacked, and she got a message from him saying his checking accounts had all been locked out and he needed her to wire him $2,000 to pay his mortgage and get his car out of impound or something. The scammer had obviously read a number of his e-mails; I compared the writing style to ones she knew were from him (like an invitation to their family reunion) and they were indistinguishable.
Possible the only reason I figured it out was use of some “stock” language at the end about instructions for wiring the money. I googled the string of text and found the same six- or seven-word combination on 419eater or somewhere like that.
Here is a link to the FBI’s web site on these types of scams. It contains a lot of information on the various types of fraud, how to identify them, what to do.
It also covers identity theft and other cons, it’s a good read.
I just got a sad, sad e-mail from a young lady named Kate Johnson, from Liverpool, England. It just broke my heart to hear her terrible plight: she’s been diagnosed with a rare, aggressive form of breast cancer and the doctors are telling her she probably only has a few weeks left to live.
I feel that it is a sign from God that she found MY e-mail address and sent me that despair-filled message. I am going to try to make her final days as worry-free and luxurious as possible (considering the circumstances, that is) by donating everything I can scrounge up and sending it to the bank account that she (conveniently!) already provided me the information to. Now its not much, so any other kind-hearted Dopers out there??
It is. IIRC there was a dope thread about this once. It’s a remnant of colonialism and many Nigerians write English with a near Victorian address and phrasing style.
