Classic Nigerian 401 Scam

[Tony]

From: Mr. Johnson Traore.
Director in Charge of Vault.
Laveguarde Security Company.
Abidjan-Ivory Coast.
West Africa.

Hello Dear,

Please accept my apology if my mail cause you any form of embarrassment. I am Mr. Johnson Traore; I work with a leading security company here in Abidjan - Ivory Coast as Director in Charge of Vaults.

I have two abandon consignment Trunk boxes worth 10.7MUSD in our Security Vault right now, the consignment belongs to one of our customs who also happen to be my friend.

But right now he is dead and no one has come forward to lay claim to this consignment for over a year now and my company want to turn over the two consignment to the Ministry of Securities as unclaimed item in line with the policy of my company.

I seek for your urgent assistance to come forward and make claim to this consignment so that it will be delivered to you as the next of kin to the deceased customer.

Please be rest assured that my intention is genuine and I am willing to present you with all the necessary documents to authenticate my claims and will facilitate the quick release of the consignment, since the customer has paid all necessary dues before his death, all we need do is make legal transfer of ownership of the consignment to your name legally at the court and you become the bona-fide owner of the consignment and it will be shipped to your choice destination by Diplimatic Courier.

Please note that as soon as I receive your acceptance e-mail, I will give you more details and what to do.

Kindly to reply me through my private email address: , if you are interested because we have just 7 working days to make this claim and please you must keep this information secret until we are through.

Thank you and May God bless you,

Mr. Johnson Traore

[scotchlass]

I get these all the time, but the addresses are usually in Kuala Lumpur on Thailand- don't know if they are the same people or not but it goes straight in the Junk box!

[Tony]

It was invented in Nigeria I think a lot of people are at it. The sad thing is that people will continue to fall for these scams.

At least by posting them here the few that bother to Google the contents of the letter might be put off

Tony

[greatscotuk]

So how do these criminals extort their money?

[Tony]

Basically, they all work in similar way. Someone has a massive amount of cash and needs help getting it from A to B or says it belongs to you. They will always need money to do this which you will be required to pay up front. They don't have to extort anything people just hand it over. There was a lady on TV recently who lost her house to one to these scams...

[temi]

At first when I hear about people who fall for this scam I used to laugh at them, now its not funny any more. I have absolutely no sympathy for victims of the scam, they have to be both greedy, fooling and utter imbecile to fall for it, that is why it surprises me that there are people with all this undesirable qualities concentrated in them.

[Tony]

Originally Posted by temi

At first when I hear about people who fall for this scam I used to laugh at them, now its not funny any more. I have absolutely no sympathy for victims of the scam, they have to be both greedy, fooling and utter imbecile to fall for it, that is why it surprises me that there are people with all this undesirable qualities concentrated in them.

That's pretty harsh Temi. Apparently 1 in 20 reply to internet scams like this, what does that say about the human race?

[temi]

Originally Posted by Tony

That's pretty harsh Temi. Apparently 1 in 20 reply to internet scams like this, what does that say about the human race?

Tony, that means 1 in 20 of us are complete idiots. There was actually a documentary on this a few years back where a few people who have fallen for this were interviewed and you see intelligent articulate people throwing common sense to the wind to respond to 'business letter" riddled with spelling error, poor grammar purposed to originate from 'Ministry of finance' in Nigeria and falling for it. A guy from Scotland yard was also interviewed, I love his response, he said "for you to fall for this type of crime you have to be greedy/dishonest yourself" (maybe not his exact words).

Perhaps I am very harsh because I am a Nigerian and I am quite feed up of both the fraudsters and their greedy victims.... and being the piggy in the middle in all this. Some of my friends and in-laws (My wife is European) who know I'm Nigerian are always telling me about the Nigerian scam letter they received......

Its also really unfortunate for the 99% of Nigerian like me who are not fraudsters who gets tainted by all this.

[Tony]

It's not great to be associated with this for sure and I can understand your position. I think most people are weak which is why they fall for these scams as well as the marketing of products you don't need.