dodgy emails about some guy in africa with lots of money just waiting to give it to me! where they from?

Question

and more importantly how do i get rid? I must get around 2-3 each week please see:

Dear Friend, I am Mr Edmond Newman Accounts supervisor with standard Bank plc London. I have urgent and very confidential business proposition for you. On June 6, 1999, a Foreign Diamond consultant/contractor with the London Diamond Corporation, Mr.Elliod Andy made a numbered time (Fixed) Deposit for twelve calendar months, valued at SD$22,000,000.00 (Twenty-two Million Dollars) in my branch. Upon maturity, I sent a routine notification to his forwarding address but got no reply. After a month, I sent a reminder and finally I discovered from his contract employers, the London Diamond Corporation that Mr. Mr.Elliod Andy died from a rebel attack. On further investigation, I found out that he died without making a WILL ...

and on and on, seems quite convincing, if you didn't get so many each week.

So any ideas where they come from and how i can get rid?

- Dave.

In the year or so that i've received them i've never thought much about em, just clicked spam (in yahoo) but still they roll on in. So is that the end result, they ask you to pay them money? uh, the cheaky people :-)

I've never been convinced by this, i actually find them quite funny, though i'm sure there's a dark side to this, like the people who DO get fooled by em. And the fact that such events are happening in the world like wars etc and they people are taking advantage such events - nasty people.

Answer 1

This is a big fat scam . now if u respond these guys WILL rip u off ur money by asking ur credit card no. or they ask for 'processing fee' of around 1000 $ n disappear... these guys might sound really convincing ... some guys even give phone nos. and addresses and respond if u contact them but remember these are just fake things to lure u to givin them the money ...y da hell do u think somebody in africa wants to give u 22000000$ for.


get rid of them by blocking thier id's immediately ..

and also.. if they r realy from africa... try this.. tell them "pinga masonara poolako" ... this is an ancient curse which will scare the cheaters off!!

Answer 2

Convincing?

Are you serious??

A person you don't know, who does not know you, introduces themself you for the first time in your life - and offers to get you involved in a gigantic financial transaction.

No alarms go off in your head - you would go ahead and do whatever they tell you to do as long as it sounds "plausible" or remotely "possible", let alone the fact this person has zero credibility - because you have never HEARD of them before in your WHOLE LIFE?!

Watch the entertaining video from planetrubyonrails with a dramatic presentation of the email you received. If that does not convince how all-too-common and all-too-unbelievable these scams are, then go ahead and read the Snopes page.

As for getting rid of the, mark them as Junk/Spam in your email client. Almost all contemporary email programs have this feature.

If you want to stop them from coming to you, good luck. Read up a little more on the subject from Spam Haus. They have a lot of info on the subject and you will probably find something there helpful. At the very least, you will get educated.

Most of the email that is sent these days is spam. In the US, there is a federal law called the CAN-SPAM law that makes it illegal to spam people or ignore their discontinuation requests. If you feel it is working well, you can write your congressman and thank them for it.

Answer 3

This is the well-known (possibly not so well-known) Nigerian 419 scam or advance fee fraud. [so-called after a section of Nigeria's legal code].

The idea is to get you to fantasise about how much money you will make, that handing over a few hundred pounds or dollars to have the details "notarised" seems like chickenfeed,

Amazingly people still fall for it. Professional people, like doctors and lawyers,

A variant is the Dutch Lottery scam, You have won a million dollars, please claim it within a week.

Somewhat more plausible are the tales of woe eg "I am a young girl. alone in the world, with an inheritance I need help to claim" or "I am a widow dying of cancer and want a good religious person to help me give my late husband's fortune to Christian causes"/

The story may vary but the intent is the same, to part fools from their money, by appealing to their greed to engage their interest.

These people are organised criminals and not the helpless maidens and pious cancer-ridden old dears they pretend to be. Tell the police. Especially if they use an address in your country, See the links below.

Some tell-tale signs

(a) the writer of the letter seems illiterate. This is to make you feel superior and think you can rip them off.

(b) they caution you not to tell anyone and swear you to secrecy.

(c) they ask you to reply to some other e-mail address, not the one from which they are writing. This is because organised criminals try and stay one step ahead of the police and abandon e-mail addresses so the trail goes cold.

(d) they use hotmail or yahoo or other easily-acquired e-mail addresses. I have had a spate of e-mails with hotmail.fr (france) addresses purportedly originating from bank managers in Burkino Faso, Presumably they rely on greed blinding people to such implausible details.

(e) They never ever give you a street address or anything you can check as to who you are dealing with (guess why!).

(f) they propose your wiring money to them using Western Union (so they cannot be traced or identified),

Answer 4

These are typical spam messages, and worse, cons. The point of confidence tricking is that they fool you into thinking they are thoroughly genuine. They need to be realistic, flawless, and convincing. I had one from "the chief technical administrator and head of financial services" of Microsoft. It looked quite formal if it wasn't for the fact they wrote "dan" instead of "Dan"...

The best thing you can do is mark it as spam and delete it. Not that this'll do much. Each message comes from a randomly faked address, so catching those responsible if like hearing a pin drop in a busy pub during the World Cup - Impossible.

The hope of these emails is that one person will reply back to the sender, giving their account details, saying "bring it on", in which case they receive a big surprise. Not of money, but of a court summoning because they are now so much in debt.

Remember, if it looks too good to be true, it is false. No-one gives you money for nothing, and no-one asks for your personal details over email as it's insecure (no encryption on emails unless you use encryption).

Best to delete it.

Answer 5

The scam popularly refered to as 419 (after a section of the Nigerian Penal code) is very popular hence the large number of people who fall for this every year.

Note though that these originate from all over the world but mainly the Subsaharan African region.

What can I say but poverty has created an ingenuity in people (of the developing world) seeking to take advantage of the greed of others (from developed world).

Advice? If you smell a rat, there probably is one!!

Delete, delete, delete, if you have more time there are several watchdoges on the internet you could report to.

Answer 6

Usually from Nigeria. I would contact the police get they're advice as what these guys do is fraudantly make you give them money. This scam has been going on for ages.

Answer 7

The old Nigerian bank scam...they like to send spam faxes through with this information too. Delete - delete- delete!!!

Answer 8

Dear friend, these people are from my country. They call them 24/7 because they stay on line 24/7 to dupe people. alwyas delete.

Answer 9

Dave,
I don't know... but they are damn annoying. If you figure out how to rid your inbox of these damn e-mails please let us all know.
I get them at work, home and accounts like hotmail and yahoo.
My suggestion is to not even open the e-mail just chick delete and not think twice about it.

Take care

Answer 10

They come from spamland. Report them as spam or just delete.