Falling for Nigerian Email Scam Costs $458,782.60

OUCH!

This can also happen with credit card orders. Found this out the hard way years ago when my wife and I were selling electronics at the time. Mostly retail, but also a little wholesaling.

Had an order for $17,000 worth of radios the buyer put on a credit card. The bank said the money was in the account, so we purchased the inventory to resell. The money stayed there for almost 3 weeks.

That was until the real owner of the cc opened his statement and found a $17K charge from our company. Poof, money taken back out.

Luckily we delayed shipping the products out or we would have had an additional nightmare to deal with. Now we don't ship products out like that unless we verify the buyer over the phone.

You can never be too careful.

~Bill

I wonder when people will realise that these emails are scams. It surprises me that many people still fall for it.

Funny story though, I had a friend that owned an internet cafe here and there was one guy (Nigerian) that use to visit the cafe everyday, spending about 5 - 6 hours (thats dedication) so we decided to put some spy thing on the computers and monitor what he does.

Well no surprise he was creating emails to send to unsuspecting victims, keeping in touch with his hoodlums back home and generally one of the creators of the many thousands of scam emails.

Good news is though, we informed the police and a lovely detective ( which she really was lovely - if only I was a few years older sigh) stuck around and caught him in the act, slapped cuffs on and threw him in the back of a police van. Still surprising people fall for it though.

Bill, thats awful, luckily you were still in possession of the goods and could recover but what a pity such animals exist in our society.

There is truth in this but also remember that many people could be desperate enough to try anything. Look at drug runners as an example, I am not saying it is right, far from it but it is a prime example of the length a person in desperate need of financial freedom will go to.

I would say it is ignorance and desperation not that they deserve it.

Of course there is expections to the rule where someone just wants a quick buck, then yes, they deserve it.

I think greed is the reason most people fall for these scams. Yes if you are having financial problems you may be tempted, but a little common sense should be enough to tell yiou "NO".

I cant believe these scams work, but there are people out there dumb enough to fall for them. I had an gf who asked me if we could help them(being these scammers) out. Now she is an EX gf, and is probably next in line to fall for this scam. If people were not easily duped, did not fall for this scam, it would go away.

This is just crazy, I hate scammers....ughh!!

They have some sick scammers who created a lottery sscam in jamaica.They called retired US citizens on the phone and tricked them that they won the lotto but in order to collect the winnings they would have to pay a fee. The cops cracked down on the ring and locked them up

How on Earth could anyone with even an ounce of brains ever fall for such a scam ? These types of stories completely shock me and it is pretty much impossible for me to relate or feel in any way sorry for the person dumb enough to try this.......the truth hurts !

Enterpryzman

It is surprising that people fall for these scams, surely if you get an email telling you that they want to give you all this money, alarm bells would start ringing. Nobody gives you money for nothing.

The bank should be held partly liable though, how can they clear a check that isn't real? When a check is cleared doesn't that mean that they money has been taken out of the check creators account? So if the bank cleared it without money being transferred out then they should be partly liable.

About two years ago a Cincinnati lady got caught up in one of these 419 scams. In the process she wired $15,000 to the scammers, and she had to make good at the bank for the $15K.

She had her 15 minutes of fame through the local news media.

:-Don

A lady at my old 9 to 5 job got scammed by something similar. They kept telling her that they needed $500 to sort the paperwork out and then they would get the money to her. Then another $500, then $1000....they just kept giving her all sorts of excuses for needing the money to sort out things with the bank, lawyers etc but she would get millions when it was finalized. Before she knew it she was out $9000. She realized then that she was being scammed.

Yes, I get these emails often. It's really really unfortunate that these guys scams like this. I wish I was an Internet Scam Expert so I could arrest them all.

Greed is always met with an ugly retribution...

And the Get Rich Quick is often delivered with failure beyond the next bend...

I had this friend who was schizo but a brilliant mathematical genius. He had a long thread mocking those Nigerian scammers. He replied back to them and wrote very elaborate emails promising them stuff, the scammers didn't realize the guy was mocking them until they read the 30th email.

There was this other scammer who scammed the Nigerian scammer. He pretended to be broke with no transportation, made this whole sob story about starving and made them wire something like $200. Of course he never deposited the fake checks they sent after that The guy was boasting about it on the internets.

I fell for a scam myself in my twenties. I bounced a check on something or another. Which was something I was often prone to do back in those days through pure neglect. Several months later I received a call from a bill collector who purchased the account saying that they were going to call the local sheriff that afternoon if I did not send them $500 (more than 5 times for the amount of the bounced check). So I sent the money via Western Union and thought nothing more of it. Fifteen years later i received a check for $200 from some Federal agency who filed suit against the person who pulled this off on me. Come to find out the guy running the collection agency ended up duping several hundred people the same way that he had me in which he threatened immediate incarceration if they were not paid the same day. Seems that is quite illegal. After a lengthy battle in court they ended up throwing him in prison and ceased $250k worth of gold coins that he had socked away in a safe deposit box. The proceeds from the coins went to all the victims. Which equated to around $200 per victim.

The Nigerian scams seem pretty weak though. But given the right circumstances anybody can be scammed.

This world needs to be tougher on scammers,thieves,ect.
The whole world is a wussy.
Take the person out and either put them in front off a firing squad,or hang them in the main 4 way intersection in town,publicly.
Then they will stop.
Period.

We wer running a computer training business in Silicon Valley. One of our customers came by one day to tell us that the banks in his native Nigeria was causing him some problems. He had over 25 million in the account. He needed to get the money out of the country because of some political issues with his family.

If we would help him, he would pay us over 8 million dollars.

He presented some really official looking documents from the Bank of Nigeria. Gave us a a telephone number to call to confirm the transfer. The person answered the phone as a Bank of Nigeria Manager. Told us that we needed to open a separate account in U.S and put at least 100K in the account.

We then needed to call them once this was completed so they could verify that we had the money to pay fees, etc. The fees kept going up until we decided we were not going to make any more money available.

But, we were pumped. How many computers and how much training would we have to deliver to make 8Million.

My partner and I were pumped. The request, however, went too far.

The only reason we were saved from financial ruin is that they wanted us to fly to Nigeria. When we went to get Passports, we were alerted to the fact, that many Americans who went to Nigeria to get money, never returned.

That exact thing happened to me... but they werent trying to deposit money, they were buying a truckload of wholesale merchandise from me, and wanted me, after the check cleared the first bank, to wire money back their freight forwarder to come pick up the shipment.

Why not? My bank cleared the check right? I did the right thing and didnt move till it cleared right? Wrong!

On day 32 the second bank called my bank, then my bank called me and said I had to put the 12k back in because the check was a scam... unfortunately I had already sent their "freight forwarder" thousands of dollars, and it was too late to turn it around.

I can identify.

I think more of these e-mails now come from Asia than Africa, though they come from all over. Sure, such scammers deserve to be punished, but I have trouble feeling too much sympathy for the victims in these cases. It just defies all common sense that a total stranger is going to trust you with huge sums of money. In most cases, I'd guess that the victim is trying to pull a scam himself. Actually, it must be an extremely tiny percentage of people who fall for this. Just about everyone gets these e-mails -I get several every day- and this scam has been well known for a long time.

If a check was cleared by your trusted banking institution and they said it was good wouldnt you believe them?

Thats what happens.... somehow. These guys are so good they fool bank presidents who have seen it all... certainly they could fool some of us.

These Nigerian scams are always coming in my inbox as junk mail,I thought everyone would be familiar with them by now. who in their right mind would send $50 million dollars to a stranger's account?

They are everywhere. Name the niche, the scammers have it covered.

Are you looking to become a nanny? I am a foreign consulate attache' and I spend way too much time abroad. I would like you to care for my special needs child. I will send all needed equipment and supplies to you to care for him/her and their condition. Because of the attention to detail needed I will pay you $4000 a month. But because I care for my child and I want them to be safe, I must run NICS background and criminal and civil checks on you and each member of your family. Please send all of their personal details including SS numbers we'll sell to criminal elements in your home country, and send a huge sum of money to us via wire transfer so we can disappear permanently with your money and leave you wondering if you have a criminal history. Well, don't worry, if you didn't before you met us, then after the pimps, hookers, drug pushers, and mobsters have their way with your identity, you will!

Do you want to work at home? Well we here at Scamscum Data Systems are looking for a freelancer who can work at home. All you need is an internet connection, valid driver's license, and access to a DHL dropoff point. We'll have people from all around the country send you computer equipment to mail here to Nigeria. We'll send you a check which will bounce later, and you'll ship all these awesome MacBooks and portable hard drives and things to us, we will use them to triple our current output of listings and emails and then you'll be out all that money.

Are you looking to make $700 a week just by running errands? You're hired. Now we will send you to Western Union offices to collect money that we scammed off other people, and then have you keep a little and re-wire it to us. Because everyone thinks people in Nigeria are scammers, we decided to sell our fake cars and computers and pretend we are soldier's wives or something and unable to do the transaction in person due to being afraid of the internet. Sound good? When can you start?

In 2 weeks, He could have been in a country where %700/mo allows one to live like a king. His BIGGEST negligence was not taking the 2 week widow of opportunity to leave. Lol.

(Actually, don't mind me, I used to rob banks for a living...)

Here is another less less less obvious lesson.

Like the OP said, that the bank can say the funds are valid when they are not...

Well here is another version of that:

If you sell anything higher end you have to be careful of this one:

The canceled cashier's check.

Someone pays you with a REAL cashiers check. You give them the merchandise and deposit said check only to find out that they had cancelled payment on the check.

Many people dont realize it, but a cashier's check can be cancelled just like a regular check can. So, just because its certified funds doesnt always mean that something fishy isnt going on.

So if you sell anything high end like that, make sure you get a money order or cash. You cant cancel either one of those.

I always feel bad when I get one of those type of emails, because I know that by pure chance there has to be at least one person out there that falls for the hundreds of thousand emails they send out.

I mean, you could think that most people are already aware of these cliché scam emails, but most are not. Why is there never any campaigns or PSA's on internet fraud, scams and other e-crime in general. It's very disappointing that people's lives are being ruined right now through these scams, while we could raise awareness in such simple ways.

Yeaa...
I have ever received scams like that..
I guess, people keep falling for that because of the thought "make money quick"

There are some aspects of this story that doesn't make sense

1. I can understand that the receiving may not be at fault but surely the cheque issuing bank do have some liability? It is their cheque and it is they who are responsible for checking the authenticity before sending the money.

2. Just how did the scammer get a cheque belonging to a current account that have more than $800,000? Very few rich people or even companies would keep that sum of money in a no/low interest current account.

it could be worse
there was a case here in Ireland 3 years ago where a man was scamed and then went to africa to try and find the scam artists

The Irish Times - Wed, Oct 31, 2007 - Irish hostage rescued in Ghana

I once got a call from a guy who said I have won a yacht and a BMW in some contest I don't remember I ever entered and want me to wired him $5K to clear the winnings.

I told the guy, just take the yacht and cash it, pay my $5K and keep the rest. And only send over the BMW to me, I told him in a serious tone like I realty mean it. He was lost for words, probably a newly trained scammer. I have had several similar calls throughout the years and are finding it quite fun playing with them

I had three different people on Craigs list try to scam me. I took the worthless checks to the bank and they agreed they were worthless, but what upsets me is that they never do anything about it. just told me to rip up the checks.

Similar things (to a degree) have happened to people on ebay who deposit cashier's checks with their banks who are told that the funds have cleared only to later find out it was a scam and they are now out the funds and the goods.

This often involves "check washing" in which real checks are stolen and then "washed" of their old info and then new info is entered. Real accounts, real checks, fake info.

Things are getting rough out there, although the poor guy in this story was just foolish because of his own greed.

Just think for a moment: Would a stranger or the Nigerian Government give you $10M to "park" in your account? In other words; would you give a stranger $10M to hold in their account somewhere in a far away country?

This scam has been reported on in the late 80's on 60minutes and many other networks.
Its just sad people are falling for it ...