Posted on 07/29/2015 11:32:09 PM PDT by nickcarraway
Not good if you did. Beware of foreign pen pals promising money. At least wait for their check to clear before you wire funds.
The “Nigerian Letter” scam is known as a “419” because the scheme violates section 419 of the Nigerian criminal code. While it seems like a laughable hoax, Americans lose millions of dollars annually to this fraud, which can appear in the form of a letter, email, voicemail, or text. The scam tries to gain access to your personal finances and works like this:
Step 1: You are sent a form of payment for a large amount, like $8 million.
Step 2: You deposit the payment into your account, and you are instructed to keep part of it, say $4 million.
Step 3: You wire transfer the remaining $4 million to the sender.
Step 4: Everything in your account is drained because you have insufficient funds to cover a $4 million check.
Step 5: That $8 million never cleared into your account before you sent the wire transfer of $4 million.
Step 6: You owe the bank a lot of money.
You can avoid Step 6 by NOT responding. Ignore individuals representing themselves as foreign government officials asking for your help in placing large sums of money in overseas bank accounts.
...If that ship has sailed (along with your money), contact the local US Secret Service field office (in Jacksonville) at 904-296-0133.
Just wait for the $8 million to clear first.
Easy.
Yep - that has always worked for me ...
Press '1' if you're a moron. Press '2' if you're a complete idiot. Press '3' if you're too stupid to live. Press '4'...
Someone tried that with my brother who was looking for a job, saying they would send him a check to deposit if he would send a certain amount back.
He almost fell for it.
But...but...Oh Crap!
I thought we’re all under an 8 year Kenyan scam?
If anyone really needs this information it’s probably already too late.
It’s easy
Go long on the Kuwaiti dinar
You’ll be a billionaire in no time
/SS
Lobie wrote the book on Nigerian pen pals.
He’s our resident expert.
Wait...that was a scam?!?
I’ve been warning people about these since around 1996 or 97 when I first got one. Didn’t take me long at all to know it was a scam, and once I started working on computers for a living, I got calls now and then asking about this.
First thing to remember - if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.
Then think...why in the world would somebody in Nigeria (or wherever) pick little old you to have this huge sum of money? Why wouldn’t he or she want to get it to someone in his own family or a friend? Why contact someone halfway around the world he’s never met, doesn’t know a thing about...silly at best.
Never ever give your personal, much less financial information to anyone online. Even your bank and credit card company will write you a physical letter or call asking you to come in to the office if they need that info. They will not ever, ever ask for it online. Or by phone, unless you initiate the phone call. (for things like verifying a debit card balance, I do that all the time)
I don’t even respond to these scams at all, the only way they would ever get a penny from me is AFTER the $8 million check clears the bank...All they would get is my name and mailing address, period, mail me the check and wait, I’ll send you the money when it clears.
Yeah I’m sure I’d get that check...
You’ll also see some email scams trying to get your info, scammers are using a screenshot of a bank’s webpage to fool people into thinking it’s the real bank website. I use gmail and it simply doesn’t show pictures, dead giveaway, if you do see it, simply right click in the text area or a link and see if it has a “Save Image As” option. It’s a picture...
I looked to see whether you were posting some article from 1995. But no, 2015 it is. Go figure.
Here is picture of it for you to look at.
Here is where you can be conveniencing me. Do to the suspicious of the policemens I have fear for my life and need to get this moneys out of country. But I can not move it to your country but banking laws say that I have to for have account in your country and it can only be opened by citizen of your country. If you have a account and put 50 American thousand dollars into and send me account number and access codes, I will be able to transfer the 150 gold billions Americans dollars into it. Your fifty thousands Americans dollars will help to cover cost of transfer. For helping me I will leave 50 gold Americans billions dollars in the account for your inconveniences.
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