Has anyone ever been scammed with a company asking to send money to the Ivory Coast for a release of funds?

Question

i have been sent an e-mail from a woman asking to send £500 via money gram to release funds to me as there jurasdiction only allows people from the UK to release money

Answer 1

It's a scam called variously Advanced Fee Fraud, Nigerian Advanced Fee Fraud or 419 Scam. Recently a lot of the scammers seem to have moved to the Ivory Coast.

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....
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

This is a SCAM as most others have said. One component of many such scams is that even a money order, which many of us treat the same as cash, is NOT real money. Your bank may hold up paying you until the money order "clears", but weeks later the originating bank may determine that there is no money to cover the payment, charge back the money to your bank, which in turn deducts that money from your bank account. You've lost big time!

Even such "small time" businesses as craft artists can be targeted by similar versions of this scam where overseas individuals want to purchase large quantities of your product. The money will never make it into your pockets.

The worst versions of this scam don't just steal your money, but also your whole identity.

Don't get taken by anything like this that sounds too good to be true!

Answer 3

If your gonna do it, then can you give me your email addy and I will send similar email too?

Its a load of old b0llocks. Anyone asking for money to say that you have won something/ will receive something/ are owed something living anywhere like Ghana, Nigeria, Botswana etc etc are always scams. Come to think of it - it can be any country in the world - US and UK included! Dont respond and bung the email in your spam folder.

Answer 4

Yes, that's a familiar e-mail scam that's also called the "419 scam" or "advance fee fraud" - you can look it up on Wikipedia. The best thing to do is simply to ignore it completely and mark it as spam - this way the scammer can't use that particular e-mail account anymore to pester people.

Answer 5

Its a downright scam!!!!

in the future also dont fall for such stuff,

there are many scams operating on the net and one needs to be careful and not get scammed!

always check any company which makes any kind of tall claims and never pay any money, ok :) best of luck :)

Answer 6

I have been sent emails from people like this and I always ignore them. I have seen this scam countless times on the news and am always surprised by the greed people show in falling into this trap.

Answer 7

It's an old scam. Anyone who asks for money to give you money you should run! That includes long lost relatives and lotteries you never entered.

Answer 8

i have, i talked to this women for like 2 weeks and she asked me to send her money, and i was like NO and she kept on asking, and i kept on saying no, so in the end she was like ill send u a cheque as over there it will take to long to cash it and could i just send the money to her thro western union, so i gave her my mail box address so she didnt have mine, and when the cheque come i took it to the police and they told me it was stolen. so i beg all the people out there, if any1 from africa asks u for money, say NO and take all the info u get to the police,

Answer 9

Lots of variations of this one. Report them if you have the time. In Canada you can send it to phonebusters.com. Do a web search for your own county under 'e-mail fraud".

Answer 10

This is a famous scam. I'm sure there are people who fell for it but it's widely known now. You can't make money that easily.