Just curious,

[Fran]

How many of you get these sorts of e mails or some variation of it? How often do you get them. I must get 3 or 4 a month.
Does anyone really fall for this scheme?
Drives me nuts that they send them so frequently.

Fran

From: Mrs. Stella Kabba
55 Jason Moyo Avenue, Prince Walter house
Bulawayo, Zimbabwe
E-mail: stella_kabs@yahoo.com

INVITATION FOR PARTNERSHIP!

Compliments of the Day,

With due respect, trust and humility, I write to you this proposal, which I believe would be of great interest to you. I got your contact on the internet while on a research for a reliable person for partnership investment overseas. Believing you are sincere and trustworthy person with transparent intentions and capable of handling this transaction to the best of your knowledge in assisting my son and I, in accepting the sum of US$15,500.000.00 (Fifteen Million Five Hundred Thousand United States Dollars) in the custody of a security company in Johannesburg South Africa into your oveseas account pending our sharing.

I am contacting you with the greatest delight and personal respect. I am Mrs. Stella Kabba, the wife of lateChief Daniel Kabba who was murdered in Zimbabwe Three months ago after the election by the forces loyal to President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe due to his support to the opposition MDC party and working against the presidents land use Act that has led to the lost of several lives of foreign (white) farmers.

During the current crisis against the opposition MDC (Movement for Democratic Change) due to their firm stand for the current election ballot to be counted, some farmers who have been a great supporters of the MDC were raided, killed and some maimed by supporters loyal to president Robert Mugabe, all in the vein to silence them and also to claim all their lands. He had ordered all the Foreign (white) farmers to surrender their farms to his party members and their Zanu PF followers. My husband was one of the highly influential and mechanized farmers in the country who have never supported his land use act and policies and had to resign from his party for this reasons.

Before his resignation from the Zanu PF, He was a distributor of the government's fertilizers. Knowing that he did not support the president's political ideology any more, the president's supporters invaded his farm, burnt down everything, killed him and confiscated all his investments. Before the death of my husband, he took me to South Africa to deposit the sum of Fifteen Million Five Hundred Thousand United States Dollars with a Security & Finance Company, as he knew the looming danger in Zimbabwe . The money was deposited as gem of precious stones to avoid much questioning and risk from the Security Company and considering also that the president of South Africa-Thabo Mbeki is secretly behind our dictator president. This money was actually meant for the purchase of new farm machineries and chemicals to improve our farming and supplies.

Now, we have decided to invest this money in South Africa to take refuge after the burial of my husband, we discovered that the laws of the country prohibits asylum seekers (Refugees) the right to investment or to operate any form of bank account, hence, I contact you to assist us in transferring this money out of South Africa into your personal or company's account overseas. You can contact my son Franklin Kabba who is presently residing in South Africa as an asylum seeker with his e-mail address: f_kabba777@yahoo.com for more details or you can call him on +27-73-1480243.

For your assistance in this regard; it will interest you to know that we will be willing to offer 35% of the total sum as a reward for helping us actualize this transfer. It is equally important to state here that considering the nature of this matter, we will require that it be handled most discreetly(Confidential). I must let you know that this business is 100% risk-free. Kindly contact me or my son using the above particulars upon receipt of this latter for execution details and other necessary discussion. Your private phone and fax number will be needed for easier communication..

I remain yours sincerely,

Stella Kabba. (Mrs

 

[TerryJ2]

I used to get them all the time but I forwarded them to the local FBI ofc, and put a filter on my AOL email and they have stopped.
I know the FBI is tired of them because they're all over the place but somewhere out there, someone will fall for it.

 

[flutterbee]

I get them on a semi-regular basis l and am amazed at people who fall for them.

They had a special on MSNBC and it was well-educated people that were falling for this. One was a City Treasurer who dipped into city funds after he invested all of his own money. He really thought, or so he says, that this was legit and that he'd be making himself and the city some money. How he could believe this, I don't know.

 

[Marcie Mac]

I am sure there are a ton of people who reply, especially senior citizens. I don't even open them - just check it and send it to Microsoft as a phishing scheme.

I not only get them via email, they come to the office fax, and once I was on Yahoo, I was IM'd with the story of a widow who was killed by govt forces, bla bla bla

It always amazes me that someone cannot find the way around to get this supposedly enormous amount of money, but has enough intelligence to open a yahoo account.

Marcie

 

[donna723]

I have never gotten one in an email. I NEVER open an email anyway unless I know who it's from. But we've gotten faxes at work that read virtually the same, and even got a few in the mail at work! Pretty brazen considering that I work in a State government office! We got one that said that we were the beneficiary of a large sum of money (in the Netherlands!) and that they would invest the money for us and send us the profits ... for just a small $14.95 administration fee ... and they were considerate enough to put a space to write in your credit card number and exp. date! How nice of them!

It's a shame, but there are a lot of people ignorant enough or greedy enough to fall for this kind of thing!

 

[Abbey]

I get them all the time, but never open an email I don't recognize. If I did, I'd have a penis 15 foot long. That's a stretch as I'm a woman.

Abbey

 

[LittleDudesMom]

I've only received two, but I've forwarded them to my isp as spam. I too saw a report about this on tv. It's amazing how many people fall for it.

Sharon

 

[Hound dog]

I hit SPAM and keep going. But I did used to get alot.

Shame is, people do fall for it every great once in awhile. Which, of course, is what they're counting on.

 

[DammitJanet]

I used to get them but havent in a long long time. I have received a few checks in my actual mail that I know are scams where they ask me to deposit this check and send them back xxx amount. Ok...yes...right! I was born in the morning but not yesterday morning.

I dont know if you guys remember when we (Cory) got caught up in that really strange credit card scam. He was underage and some man talked to him on Yahoo and got our address and convinced him that he (the man) would make these purchases and ship them to our house and Cory was to keep some and forward some of them to this guy in some weird place. The guy actually sent some fedex shipping supplies here.

We got about 3 odd items before I started wondering what this stuff was. At first it was really small stuff. A cheap radio, a weird supply of beauty stuff, and something else I cant remember. The third time I told the shipping company to return it to sender. The first two times I thought maybe it was something we accidentally won somewhere because they really were cheaply made. Things kept coming and after the fedex shipping supplies came...and I read the yahoo IM texts...I went to the Postmaster. I kept getting catalogs and stuff in this guys name. I kept getting shipments for this guy. I called the companies that were sending the stuff and reporting that we didnt order it. That this guy didnt live here. It turned out that they knew it was being ordered on a stolen credit card and this name was out of Nigeria and it was some ring they were looking into but they didnt want to stop sending out the junk. To this day I still get his catalogs. I cant change his address because its illegal to change someone elses name. I even get thank you cards from both political parties for his contributions!

 

[OpenWindow]

I get them a few times a month. We just replaced our server at work, and they haven't set the spam filter yet. I get at least 30 spam emails a day now. I can't believe people fall for them either.

 

[Lothlorien]

I only got one once and it was from an ebayer who wanted to do something wierd with a payment. Something seemed like money laundering to me. I forwarded to a friend who's an auditor for the FBI. Never got one of those again. husband gets them a lot at work, because his email is forwarded through a lot of businesses.

 

[meowbunny]

I used to get them. Don't anymore. I went to the library and used their computer and created a form letter that said, "I am so sorry to hear of the death of the family. I would love to help but my money is tied up at the Bank of Monrovia. If they could help me get the sum of $15,000,000 (US) released by the Bank of Monrovia, I would be more than happy to help you with your problem." I don't know why but after the third time I sent out this letter, I never got another email of this type.

Now, if you could figure out a way to stop the emails telling me I've won some mysterious online lottery ......

 

[Nomad]

I use to get them all the time...but haven't in several months (thank GOODNESS).
I delete and trash them asap.

 

[witzend]

Nope. I get the cialis type ads. They tell me that my prescription is about to run out and I need to re-order...

 

[Fran]

meowbunny, I think you have the right idea.

 

[Stella Johnson]

I used to get them once a month but recently I sold some stuff on Craigslist.org That opened a can of worms. Now I get 3 or 4 per day plus at least another 10 from Nigerian jerks that want me to take a cashier's check as payment .... oh and they want to write it for $500 more than I'm selling it for. Then I'm supposed to Western Union the money to them in NIGERIA.

I was reading something on yahoo a few days ago about all the Nigerian scams. Some idiotic "official" over there thinks we should prosecute the victims of this fraud for being greedy.

I like Meowbunny's answer to it.

Steph

 

[Marguerite]

I was very curious about these the first time I saw them. Of course no way was I taken in (now would I have responded) but I was very curious as to how they got on to ME.

So I did some digging and found some fascinating stuff.

First, if you check the amounts of money, often the amount they say is stashed somewhere in a Swiss bank account (or buried somewhere) is greater than the entire Gross Domestic Product of that country. Hmmm... unlikely.

Second, the scams aren't old emails recirculating - new scams are being written the whole time. Often it's the same people repeating a scam that reaped a few shekels for them before. But there are always new people wanting to make a fast illegal buck who are quite capable of copying someone else's successful scam.

Third, they get very large mailing lists and broadcast the email. I don't know how many they send out, hopefully most people have got the message by now that these are scams and hoaxes. But there are always a few people who either haven't got the message, who think they can have a go at scamming a scammer, or who just want to take a chance in case THIS time, it's for real. As if!

Because anyone who responds to this would HAVE to know that doing this sort of thing would be immoral, if not illegal, then anyone getting ripped off is unlikely to report their loss, at least not at first and if it's only a small amount. But the psychology of this is good - depending on the skill of the scammer, they can play a vulnerable sucker like a fish.

Because these are generally broadcast, the scammers often use a bot to handle at least the earlier responses. Once things get interesting you often get a person stepping in and replying.

I found once priceless link - a bloke who deliberately pretended to be a sucker on the end of the line. He did his best to protect his identity (there are many ways you can get burned with these guys - identity fraud, bank accounts emptied, meeting in person and getting kidnapped or worse) and clearly knew enough to stay safe. He published all the messages to and fro on his website.
What the guy did - he acted like it really WAS his long-lost family who had been killed in this tiny little country and did things like requesting flowers and a wreath be left at the roadside location of their accident. He wanted photos of the wreath and a small memorial to be emailed to him. He kept up this sort of thing and got more outrageous all the time.

I did some digging again - I found the link. It's long, but a very enjoyable read. Also informative. I think it should be required reading for anyone who has ever received too many of these things or ever been tempted, even for a second.

http://www.jirdc.org/Files/Donald.pdf

Enjoy.

Marg

 

[DammitJanet]

If anyone thinks folks dont get caught up in this junk, you dont watch much daytime court shows. At least a couple of times a month one party is suing the other party because the defendant asked the plaintiff to cash this check they got and they conveniently didnt have a bank account. Of course, defendant will give the other a cut of the money. Of course again...check is worthless and supposedly they both find this out after the plaintiff cashes check and gives the other one the money.

They always act so surprised. "But how was I supposed to know it was bad? I got it because I go online and the letter attached said I had won the money!"

 

[Star*]

Well I'm a millionaire - I get about 3-5 a week

NOTIFICATION OF BEQUEATH

DEAR BENEFICIARY,
On behalf of the Trustees and Executor of the estate
of Late Engr.Steve Collins ; I once again try to notify you as my
earlier letter was returned undelivered. I hereby attempt to reach you
again by this same email address stated on the WILL. I wish to notify
you that late Engr.Steve Collins made you a beneficiary to his WILL.

He left the sum of Seven Million One Hundred Thousand Dollars
(USD$7,100.000.00 ) to you in the codicil and last testament to his WILL.

Being a widely travelled man, he must have been in contact with you in the past or
simply you were recommended to him by one of his numerous friends abroad who wished you
good. Engr.Steve Collins until his death He was a very dedicated Christian who loved to
be involved in charitable projects. His great philanthropy earned him numerous awards
during his life time.
Please if I reach you this time as I am hopeful you will endeavour to get
back to me as soon as possible to enable me conclude my job.

I hope to hear from you in no distant time.
Yours in Service,
BARRISTER RUMFORD N JOHN ESQ


I know you're not supposed to respond - but I send them a return email and tell them to remove me from their list AND I have contacted the US Secret Service web site and reported them. With this joker - I told him that IF he really was worldly - he should have picked up a dictionary before he wrote his scam. (to enable me conclude my job) ORLY?

But my favorite? I hope to hear from you in no distant time...ROFLM Millionaire AO

 

[Marguerite]

I don't know if I said this - I meant to - most people don't respond. But if they send out 1000 emails and ten respond, that may only be a 1% strike rate, but that's ten fish hooked on the line, to be hung out to dry. And that's enough to keep them doing this.

Marg