Dodgy email from africa?

Question

Have just received email form a guy africa asking me to go into business with him getting money out of the country doing a 60/30 split. I know it is a scam but am not sure who to report it to as am in Cyprus but it did come through my hotmail account. Any one know who I report it to.

I know its a scam I want to know how to report it because there will be somebody out there who would do it.

If we don't report these things then they will never stop.

Answer 1

You shouldn't open unsolicted email from unknown sources. Often what happens is that when you open up spam, it sends back a trigger to the originating source indicating that a valid email address has been found thus subjecting you to even more spam down the road. Even using the preview pane in email products sends web beacons back to spammers.( http://helpdesk.gwu.edu/mailfilter/spam.html )

However, in this case since you have already opened up this email which is a probably a variant of the 419 Nigerian phishing scheme, display all headers and send it to Fraud Watch International. The email address is in the link to the webpage below.
http://www.fraudwatchinternational.com/lottery/

There are a couple Yahoo pages dedicated to the 419 Fraud
Yahoo Lottery Fraud
http://help.yahoo.com/l/us/yahoo/mail/original/abuse/abuse-63.html
http://help.yahoo.com/l/us/yahoo/abuse/abuse-110240.html

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

It really doesn't do any good to report it, but if you do then report it to the CIA. I once did that although nothing came of it and the FBI didn't care anything about it. Best to just delete the email. Of course I always respond and play games with them but that isn't recommended.

I once almost had one of them ready to send me $500 cash to ensure the deal they wanted but they backed out at the last minute. Would've been nice to take one of them. Some people have though not for much. A hundred bucks here or there.

Answer 4

The best you can do is mark it as junk if it's still in your inbox then at least hotmail knows to filter them out and then delete it.

Answer 5

It's not worth reporting because it probably comes from Nigeria, fraud is common there and no action will be taken.

Answer 6

Soemone i know got done over for 10,000 dollars doing this. He was an idiot, but im sure there are many gullible poeple who WOULD do it. As for who to report it to...No idea really. Is it really worth reporting. BLOCKING works for me.

Answer 7

forward to trading standards in England, they will then contact the authorities in the country of origin

Answer 8

forward with all headers to: [e-mail], never reply to this stuff.

Answer 9

scam dont do it