Have you gotten one of those Nigerian scam letters?

Question

I've heard of them and recently gotten two. They claim someone with your last name had died and has no heirs. There are several versions of this letter, but in the last, bank president/criminal asked that I use his "personal" email address:

[e-mail]

Since it's a yahoo address I thought I'd include it.

Answer 1

Yes - I used to get stacks of them after I made the mistake several years ago of signing an online guestbook and leaving my email address (often email addresses are harvested from sources like this by unscrupulous types who sell them as contact lists to spammers and scammers).

The Nigerian Scams are known as such because the type of fraud that they attempt originated in Nigeria. Before the days of email the same type of fraud was attempted by post, so they are not new by any means! They are also known as "419 scams" after Section 419 of the Nigerian Penal Code which makes this type of scam illegal in that country.

Basically they tell you some hard luck story and say they have millions of dollars that they can't get hold of without your help... and they offer you a massive slice of the cash if you "help" them.
Then they report various obstacles that they need you (and your cash) to help them overcome. The idea is to slowly bleed you dry with promises that just one more bribe to a customs official or whatever and the money will be on its way to you. There is no money (or if there is then it's fake).

There are basically three things that can be done with a "419" email, depending on how much time and effort you are prepared to spend:-

1. The simplest of all - DELETE it. Never reply, even to say "ha ha I know you're trying to scam me" This just confirms that you have a functioning email address and the scammer will then try to sell it on to someone else - so what you'll get is more 419 emails!

2. If the email comes from an email provider that you recognise and trust, like Yahoo, Hotmail, Netscape etc then forward the message headers to the email provider with a note of the complaint. [The message source maybe faked but often a contact email address is quoted in the message the scammer actually writes to you.]
To do this on Outlook Express:-
Right click the message and select Properties
Click on the Details tab
Click on Message Source
Right click the mass of code you see and click Select All to highlight the entire message
Right click again and click Copy
Paste into your message to Yahoo, Hotmail or whoever

The address to email this to is "abuse@(the email provider) eg. [e-mail]

I have a standard message in my autosignature to save time, which reads:-

"Dear Sirs,
We have today received the message, forwarded below, which appears to be from one of your users, namely [here I quote the email address of the scammer]

We believe that this message is an attempted West African Advanced Fee
Fraud, also known as a "419 Fraud". See London Metropolitan Police Fraud Unit website at:-
http://www.met.police.uk/fraudalert/419.htm
for further details.

We trust that you will take appropriate action against such abuse of your terms and conditions of use.

For your information, the message source code is provided below:-
**********************************************************

[I paste the message source in here]

***********************************************************

Sincerely "

Yahoo in particular is very good at deleting these scammer's email addresses so they don't get any replies and can't work their scam on unsuspecting victims

3. The third thing you can do is for experts only - but it is very amusing... play the scammer along and make him waste his time and money on you. WARNING: Don't try this unless you are confident that you know what you are doing. These guys are ruthless criminals and are likely to get VERY annoyed with you.

Visit this site for loads of advice (and some very amusing tales on how the scammers have been themselves scammed):-

http://www.419eater.com/index.htm

But whatever you do, don't fall for it and don't let any of your friends or relatives fall for it either. The mere fact that these scams are still being attempted means that SOME people must be being fooled otherwise the scammers wouldn't be bothering to send out their nasty little emails.

Answer 2

I too received this scam and became very frustrated at the lack of concern or help from authorities. That is until they sent me this letter or scam through the regular mail. When this happened I took it to my local authorities who were working with the FBI on the matter. There's really not much they will do if anything if you are only receiving it online. Be sure to watch your mail at home and if you receive anything take to your local police dept. They should have a detective that handles these type cases. GOOD LUCK!

Answer 3

If you do not check a company before entering into a transaction, you could lose your money, time and credibility. Some widely used resources are the Better Business Bureau (www.bbb.org) and the national fraud center (www.fraud.org) these days, you can easily find out more about a company using the internet in a few minutes. From a company's website, you can details about its ownership, how old the company really is and feedback from the company's customers.
You can find more detailed information about a company at http://tinyurl.com/gtb89

Answer 4

Reply to the person by saying “the fear of EFCC is the Beginning of wisdom” that will be the last you’ll hear of the person.
or you can just ignore the mail.

EFCC is Nigerian regulatory body that tackles Fraud within and outside the country.
I think you should go to Google and type in “EFCC Nigeria” its short for Economic and Financial Crimes Commission.
You’ll get to read bout all their reports and advice on e-mails like that.

Good luck.

Answer 5

I get those all the time. Some people actually fall for them. Just report them as Spam and delete. Unless of course you're comfortable giving out your personal banking information or going to jail for trying to pass counterfeit postal money orders.

Answer 6

Let's see at last count I was up to 1,000,252 from that part of the world, well only if you count the faxes in that count. Oooopsss I forgot the chat room where they wanted my bank account number to "transfer" funds to it so now it's 1,000, 253

Answer 7

Yes, I have gotten them also. Just a group of blacks located in Africa trying to scam money out of Americans.

Answer 8

I get them all of the time...I put them up on one of my boards, then mail back a copy of the link :) here is the list I have so far(I had others but I didn't do this at first):
http://xsorbit27.com/users5/redeyesblackdragon/index.php?board=8.0

Answer 9

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&rls=SUNA%2CSUNA%3A2006-10%2CSUNA%3Aen&q=nigerian+419

Definately a scam and should be avoided at all cost. Click on the link for numerous websites about this topic.

Answer 10

Ya get them all the time just mark them as spam no biggie