D.
Pomona,#2Consumer Suggestion
Fri, June 23, 2006
This Nigerian Scam 0r Advance Fee Fraud nearly happened to me. A person claiming to want to purchase a cemetery plot that I had for sale contacted me and stated he would pay me X amount of dollars; I was to subtract what was rightfully mine and send him the balance via Western Union Telegram. Much to my shame, I was very naive about this and having never experienced this before thought it was legitimate. I took the money orders to my bank and learned that they were counterfeit. I reported this matter to the Post Office as well as the Secret Service of the US for Fraud. I have since been the attempted victim of many more nigerian scam attempts. My advice is if they ask you for an address on where to send money orders to give them the address of the United States Secret Service. Hopefully one day, they'll get caught and it will keep other people from losing large sums of money that they cannot afford to lose.
Robert
Rochester,#3Consumer Comment
Sun, May 07, 2006
How much did they need to get things going? $2000? $6000?? This is a very old nigerian scam. It is also known as an Advance Fee Fraud. The perpetrators of Advance Fee Fraud (AFF), known internationally as "4-1-9" fraud after the section of the Nigerian penal code which addresses fraud schemes. There is a funny site, 419eater, by a group of people who scam these scammers. Just put a .com after it. There is a warning however, WARNING Please remember that these people are CRIMINALS and should be treated as such. Under no circumstances must you enter into any communications with these people unless you feel you are adequately prepared to deal with them. Under NO CIRCUMSTANCES give them ANY real private information about yourself. These guys may appear dumb and clueless, but I suspect it wouldn't be so funny if you were to come face-to-face with one of them, although I'll be the first to admit the chances of this happening are astronomical - unless of course you are dumb enough to fly over to meet them in person, in which case you need to be sectioned ASAP! best bet... delete the email and ignore them.