We have been infiltrated by crooks that have been in the news. It is a big scam and not they are contacting us here at Active Rain. Beware...do not respond. This is the letter sent to me today via AR mail.
| Name: | Miss Roffina Naina |
|---|---|
| Email Address: | miss_roffina_naina00@yahoo.com |
| Subject: | PLS GET BACK TO ME |
| IP: | 196.201.71.182 |
| Message: | From Miss Roffina Naina Abidjan cote D`Ivoire West Africa. |
From Miss Roffina Naina
Abidjan cote D`Ivoire
West Africa.
MY Dear Sheron Cardin,
Please this mail comes to you directly,kindly ready and get back to me,
Good thing to write you. I have a proposal for you,this however is not mandatory nor will I in any manner compel you to honour against your will. Your profile pushed me to send you this mail, I am Roffina Niana,i am 23 years old Girl and the only daugther of my late Father Mr Richard Ehoha Naina.
My Father was a highly reputable business man (a cocoa merchant) who operated in the capital of Ivory coast during his days. It is sad to say that he passed away mysteriously in France during one of his business trips abroad on 12th.August 2005.Though his sudden death was linked or rather suspected to have been master minded by an uncle of his who travelled with him at that time. But God knows the truth!,
Since then my father death took me so special. Before his death in the hospital, he told me about a box he concealed the sum of Ten million, five hundred thousand United State Dollars.(US D$10.5) deposited in one of the security company in Europe, which he disguised and declared the box to contain family valuables belongs to his foriegn bussiness partner instead of Dollars, for security reasons,he do this for selfety of his life best known to him, by this way the company does not know the real content of the box.
The deposit document which I have in my possession carries my late Father's Name as the depositor in the security company,
i Really don't know what to do. This is because I have suffered a lot of set backs as a result of incessant political crisis here in Ivory coast. The death of my Father actually brought sorrow to my life that i will never forget,
Dear, I am in a sincere desire of your humble assistance in this regards. Your suggestions and ideas will be highly regarded.
Now permit me to ask these few questions:-
1. will you honestly help me as your daughter?
2. Can I completely trust you?
3 i hope you will not betray me when this fund get to you?
4. Please, Consider this and get back to me as soon as possible.
Thank you so much
Yours Miss Roffina Naina
Namaste
Sheron, one of my favorite humor columnists, Gene Weingarten of the Washington Post, actually does a column on this every couple of years where he corresponds with these scammers. I'm attaching a link here to show how amusing it can be to turn the tables on them, though I don't recommend doing this yourself (he gets paid for wasting time like this!). If you feel the outside link is inappropriate to post to this blog please feel free to delete it.
I thought it was even funnier because I am a Sagitarrian (you'll have to read the article to understand that).
Where can I send the check?
HONESTLY... how STUPID do these people think we are?
Me
That is funny Penny!
I get emails like this all the time, especially since I started selling items on craigslist locally. People will get a hold of you and ask you to send the item if you will accept a money order. The money order is always in a large sum whereby the "buyer" asks you to send the rest of the cash to them with their purchase. So you basically wind up giving them money, giving them your item for sale and they get cash too. Great scam! I caught onto that one quick. Beware, most of them do come out of Nigeria.
I usually just send them a reply email letting them know I don't sell to scammers. :-)
Ah...the good old SPIN the the Nigerian Fraud letter. You may find it interesting to hear that some of my good old colleagues with Secret Service were actaully stationed in Lagos, Nigeria trying to stop all of the fraud being committed against our country. Boy did they have some interesting stories to come home with.
It still amazes me the number of people that actaully DO follow thru on their requests for bank information etc. I even know of victims that believed the stories and booked flights to go over there and deliver the money in person. What were they thinking?
As I'm sure all of you already do...you can do 1 of two things:
1) Simply hit the "delete" button and be done with it OR
2) Forward the email to 419.fcd@usss.treas.gov where they have a task force specifically for Nigerian Fraud Letters/Emails/Faxes.
Sheron, Thank you for the heads up on this. Will keep my eyes open.
Leslie
OH MY GOD I get these email ALL the time. Could they be getting our names from AR. It is sooo weird.
Thanks anyway for the warning at least I know where they might be coming from. Anyway hope all is well, I have been away from AR busy working and too tired to chat. Thanks again, Phyllis Pafumi
I get one or two of these Nigerian scam things every day in my e-mail. They've learned how to sit around cheap flats in London and "screen scrap" sites for e-mail addresses. There is little anyone can do to prevent such a practice, as I don't believe it is actually illegal. I can't imagine for the life of me how anyone of reasonable intelligence, and after similar scams having been run for several years, could actually fall for this! I'm often tempted to respond in such a manner as the following:
Dear Nigerian Scam Artist,
Please accept my condolences for the passing of your (mother, father, brother, sister, cousin, banker, etc.). I am afraid that I can not assist you in your effort to claim your due inheritance; however, perhaps we can do business on another level. I have deposited a substantial sum of money in my bank account for the purpose of purchasing from you the name, phone numbers, addresses, and bank account information of every poor dumb bastard who responded to your scam. I will take my chances that they have anything left after you scoured their various bank and credit accounts. I believe I can profit from such a list, and will willingly pay you for it as soon as 1) you provide it, and 2) it is proven that I can, indeed profit by it. Trust me.
Your American Friend
Hi,
I am not a computer geek--I'm married to one--but if you are getting a lot of these type of e-mails in any of your e-mail accounts you need to do more to protect yourself. Your spam filters and virus checkers probably need to be updated. I can't tell you how to do it but it would be worth your time and maybe the $ needed to have it done before you have an identity theft problem or a virus that crashes your computer.
I don't want to scare anyone--just be safe in cyberspace!
Deb
Actually these folks even will start calling you... on the telephone... paying phone bills... claiming they are in the UK or some such...
One such called me last week...
Being an avid prankster myself, and a lawyer to boot, I played with them a bit... had them return a call to me at the law firm... passed the call to another partner... he had a blast with the guy...
Seems the guy wanted to buy a house in "the US" and wanted us to help... as he did not know the US well, he said he would rely on us to help him choose... we sent him two listings, he said he would go for the more expensive ($17 million) site unseen...
Wanted to transfer money to our account so that we could purchase the property for him... and wanted to let us hold the remainder of the money, claiming some additional $15 million, till he could get his family here... said we could keep $5 million for helping...
Very interesting, we said...
As it turned out, we thought they wanted to remove money from our accounts... but they were pleased enough to have a valid bank account in the US... of course we referred the entire correspondence to a client, the Federal Bureau of Investigation... seems the scam also includes laundering money for terrorist activities...
So, now, do we do business with terrorists?
Hmmm...
One would think people would not fall for this sort of thing... but they do... it is like the old technique of sending bills with over due notices to senior citizens, who, because of their integrity and fear of debts, and because of their own knowledge of their failing memories, these seniors actually paid the bills... some billions of dollars were actually scammed this way...
We Americans are easy targets... it seems...
by the way... the shark photo reminded me of the Far Side cartoon... one scuba diver trying to out swim another... with a shark swimming after them... the diver closest to the shark has a thought baloon saying "I sure hope I can outswim that shark" while the lead diver baloon says "I dont have to out swim the shark as long as I out swim my buddy..."
Ouch...
Typical, is it not?
I'm laughing! It's all relative.
Here's a true story. Last year, right here in Selma, the city posts in the local newspapers addresses of homeowners who have not paid a water assessment bill and that these homeowners homes are being thrown into foreclosure if the bills are not paid by such and such date. Most of these charges were under $100. The big news is that dozens of our residents lost their homes for real. No one knew about these charges and if they did not read the paper that week, the next thing they knew, they were being evicted. Now there is a rip off scam...our government.
I know...it makes me sick...there is no escaping until they are all in the hoosegow!
hoosegow... I like that word...
But the fact is that none of these folks will ever end up inside... they come from countries where no enforcement is likely, and where anyone who would execute enforcement cannot, due to international boundaries, etc.
SPAM Filter, and laugh, but it is sad that anyone will actually think this stuff is legitimate, given that the presentation states clearly that it is not, but I think that is what attracts the unwary... they like the sham of it, and think they will get over on people.
Americans are so gullible when ot comes to getting over on society...
She found me today!
You've received a contact message from your Contact Form on the ActiveRain network.
Message details:
From: Miss Roffina Naina
Email: miss_roffina_nainas1@yahoo.com.tr
Subject: PLS GET BACK TO ME
Dear Scott, goodday Mr Scott, i am Miss Roffina Naina, i have somthing very important to Discuse with you, (but it is privacy) please could you contact me with my privite Email Id, miss_roffina_nainas1@yahoo.com.tr, for more clearification,
thanks and God bless you
Yours Miss Roffina Naina
Email sent from IP: 196.201.84.46
Never open email if you don't know who its from. Not only can you be spammed to death but you could unleash a virus. trojan, worm, or any of those other nasty things that can bring your computer to a grinding halt!
Terry Haugen - STAGE it RIGHT!
Got 2 recently myself and they got right thru all my newly updated spam, spyware etc.
THEY ARE EVERYWHERE ..... ..........BEWARE!
Used to get these all the time. My filter must be doing a better job lately! At least I know what these guys are trying to do. The ones that really get me are when they are just a jumble and make NO sense at all! What are they thinking/doing?!!!
Kim Dillon, Creative Eye Home Staging
Here's the problem. If they didn't work, they wouldn't stay in circulation. We have many elderly who have been taught the Internet by their well-meaning children, but have not been given the "don't talk to strangers" lecture. Some of our elderly do respond to these, and some have lost money. That's a fact. And that's why these devils stay in business.
Speak to your aging parents, and your young children, about the predatory nature of the Internet. Only then, when EVERYONE is educated about these potential dangers, will they go away.
These predators should be jailed (jailed not being my first choice).
I got the same sort of letter and posted it last week as well - BEWARE THOUGH - I didn't do anything except open since it said it was from AR and it took me all day Friday to de-virus my computer.
Karen Monsour, Fort Lauderdale, Fl
Sheron,
Good post and responses! I spam these guys out but they keep coming back with a new line/twist to their story. The latest I got was from someone claiming to be my brand new best friend!!!!
Penny White
Beststagedesign
titoki -sounds painful
Anyone ever gotten the secret shopper scam letter? I got a stamped hand-addressed letter from Canada the other day saying that I had been chosen to be a secret shopper and they even sent a ~$740 'check' which I was to cash to make the $50 "secret shopper" purchase at Walmart, something else, and then Western Union back some amount. The scam here, is that, they are counting on the bank cashiers being blind or stupid and not realizing the check is fake, and by the time it is discovered, you have sent them a bundle from your account via Western Union. And you have to act immediately, or you can't participate...
I soooo wanted to call them and shoot them an earful of "How dare you insult my intelligence!" But, then, I remembered it came from Canada, so I didn't want to waste the money to make a long distance call. My only consolation is that they wasted the postage! I don't know how they got my address!
I receive about 10 emails like this a day, I just delete..delete..delete! I am going to read the attachement of one of your comments, then get back to this. Keep us the great postings.