ARE YOU BEING SCAMMED?

The following is an explanation of some of the most common methods employed by scammers, please read it carefully to ascertain whether you are being targeted by scammers. It may not be 100% accurate or exhaustive and is only based on the things that I understand to be true.

The common stages of the scam:

1: The proposal letter.. I have seen many variations on the proposal, they are getting more and more varied as the scam becomes more widely known in an effort to deceive those who are clued up on 419 fraud.

Common variations include people who claim to be;

Company officials, lawyers, executives, political figures, cancer patients, lottery officials, ministers, sports directors, refugees. (this is not an exhaustive list).

Typically someone will write to you and claim to be an official of some sort and offer you the chance to take charge of a large sum of money or valuables.

They often pretend to come from other places than Nigeria, I've had scammers pretending to be from Holland, Canada, China, South Africa, Ghana, UK, Spain, Zimbabwe, Iraq, the list is almost endless.

The first email is mass mailed to a typically large mailing list which is usually harvested from internet guest books, the mail may be sent to many hundreds of email addresses and if your mail address that has been targeted by scammers then you will generally receive many and varied proposals. THEY ARE ALMOST 100% CERTAINLY ALL SCAMS!

2: The First Reply.. If you haven't already been asked for your personal details in the first email then it is very likely that this request will come in the next email, once the scammer knows that you are interested in his proposal he will typically request some information from you in order that he can establish that you are genuine. 

The personal details that he is likely to ask for include;

Home Phone number.

Passport.

Fax Number.

Name And Address.

Bank Details.

Generally the scammer is not really interested in them and you will find that if you supply a false address and bank details then it makes no difference, it just adds credibility to the scam for them to ask for these things and also it weeds out those who are not really interested. However I have seen some cases where peoples identity has been stolen to apply for credit cards etc.

Generally the scammer will dissuade you from discussing the deal with anybody.

3: When you have replied again... The scammer will do their best to answer your questions and allay any fears that you may have, at this point they may well point you towards a fake solicitor and / or a fake bank / security company website. 

They will almost certainly try and get you on the telephone, in addition to this I have seen cases where scammers use internet chat rooms to snare their victims. What generally follows for a while is that the scammer will send a bunch of fake official looking documents including certificates of deposit, power of attorney, death certificates, fake pictures including trunks full of money.

They may ask you for a small amount of money at this stage, though in my experience, this part of the scam generally comes later, at first they pretend to pay the fees themselves in order to make you feel obligated when the time comes for the sting.

They may string this part of the deal out for a little while in order to get your confidence.

4: At some point in the deal you will be asked for fees.. to cover Demurrage (example for storage of trunk boxes) or solicitors fees or other legal costs and bribes, usually these funds are requested via wire transfer such as Western Union.

Failing this the scammer will often invite the victim to fly to a foreign country to inspect the consignment, this is very dangerous and the scammers use very convincing sleight of hand tricks to convince their victims, they may even invite the victims to spend some of the dollars if it is a money scam.

5: Wash Wash... This is a common scam where the money is covered in a black ink, the scammers say that they can get a special cleaning solution to clean up the money, of course this is a big con and the cleaning solution is fabulously expensive.

6: Once you are hooked... The scammer will generally stay in correspondence with you until you basically have no money left.

These are not definitive guidelines but you should be able to see a pattern in your own correspondence with the above.

The simple answer is to stay safe and not have any contact with these people, if ANYONE writes to you saying you've won the lottery or that you've inherited money or that they want to transfer money to you IT IS A CON! DO NOT WRITE BACK.