When you see this question in a $bazillion “business proposal” it’s a dead giveaway. Hello? The question is discriminatory. What a bunch of idiots and yet hundreds of people go bankrupt every year falling for this crap. Perhaps they deserve to never questioning who may be at the root of the scam and who may be getting funding or hurt over such transactions.
The reason for this bitch is because today they’ve sunk to an all time low. Or is it? The spam starts out, “My name is Sgt.James Regan I am an American soldier with Swiss background,serving in the military with the army’s 3rd infantry division based in Iraq/Baghdad. With a very desperate need for assistance…”
I can hit the delete button as well as anybody but when I see people acting like desperate predators day in and day out it makes me want to…. bitch.
— SmarterThanU
This article appears in Aug 13-19, 2009.
I get those all the time. I always want to reply and give them a piece of my mind but then they’ll have my info. I don’t even open them anymore. I wonder, can you report it to the police?
Yeah, just forward them the e-mail 🙂
If you’re dumb enough to fall for these (and similar) scams, then you deserve to have your money taken from you.
I keep telling them to send me a little bit of money & I’ll get the ball rolling…never get another reply 🙂
“”My name is Sgt.James Regan I am an American soldier with Swiss background,serving in the military with the army’s 3rd infantry division based in Iraq/Baghdad. With a very desperate need for assistance…”
That in itself should tell people it’s a scam. Ya think the US or any military (in the Western world) with the exception of Nigeria, would ever condone this.
The gullibility of some people amazes me. They think they can get something for nothing.
Investing money in these scams cannot often be deterred once the investors’ eyes glaze over with money signs. I not only warned my mother and father, I provided them with the research I did when I cross-referenced the names I found at the site (these scammers had been charged in the past (and I couldn’t believe they signed the same names on their ‘testimonies’.)) But, I was able to convince my parents not to invest more money until they tried to retrieve some of their initial investment. So, after 5 years and many requests for their riches or even the principle back, they learned.
Can I really forward them to the police miles??
Virgomom…no, you shouldn’t just forward the e-mail to them. It might look as though you are trying to scam them 🙂
But you can call them or e-mail them and describe the scam and if there is anything they can do about it, you can send them the e-mail with the original sender’s address. There’s probably not much they can do, but for serious scams, like phishing and whatnot I think the police (or some other authority) can/should be notified. HRP does deal with fraud, but I don’t think e-mail scams are on their agenda.
http://www.halifax.ca/Police/Fraud/index.a…
The RCMO have a link for reporting e-mail fraud
http://www.rcmp-grc.gc.ca/scams-fraudes/re…
Also, if you are concerned if an e-mail is legit or not (they usually are not) check out:
http://www.snopes.com/
there are lots of other similar sites too.
do like i do,get them all interested in doing their con job on you,then play them for a couple weeks,then tell them that you just have been wiretapped by the feds,and that they have there i.p. addy,and router adresses,and you have to shut down, a.s.a.p.,then in two days,write to them and start it all over again, but with a different twist,asking them for cash up front.you get the idea, i love driving them nuts like that. the last guy said he would send me a hundred bucks just to not mail him anymore, i’m not waiting for the cheque tho.
oh, and by the way,if you get these things through hotmail,contact m.s.n., their security force will deal with it, by tracking the offender through the various routes that they take,how do you think they found mafia boy,and the rest.
damn, if he needs help, I know a Nigerian Prince just dying to help people out!
I actually met someone who fell for one of these scams. It was sad.
I was sitting in an HRM bus one winter night a couple of years ago on my way back from work when a real salt-of-the-earth kinda fella got on and stomped heavily in his rubber boots and overalls to take a seat at the front of the bus. He appeared to be in his late 40s or early 50s.
He kept fidgeting and taking something out of his wallet, then looking at it and smiling. Then he started whistling in joy and fidgeting some more. A girl got on the bus and sat near him, and you can just tell he was bursting at the seams to talk about something. He whistled some more, played with the item in his wallet a couple of times, then couldn’t hold it anymore. He looked at her and started talking about something, but I wasn’t really listening so I didn’t catch what he was saying. She left after a bit and he went back to whistling and smiling broadly at everyone in the bus.
A little later another passenger got on and sat in this joyous person’s vicinity. Sure enough, it took about a minute of fidgeting before he took out the item in his wallet and started showing it to the guy and talking to him. I was half tuning into the conversation and caught the following words:
“African….bank account… lawyer… gonna meet me at Lord Nelson with my cut”.
Now I was at 100% eavesdropping mode! Turned out the poor guy had been sending cash for months from his bank account to someone in Africa for what he believed to be a business transaction of some sort, and now he was going to meet with the Lawyer of the widow of the late King Mambuto (or whoever) for his big ‘pay day’ for helping out.
I couldn’t believe I was actually sitting across from someone who was smack in the middle of being scammed! The item in his wallet was the alleged African Lawyer’s business card that he was supposed to use to identify him in the lobby of the Lord Nelson.
What pissed me off the most is that not only did these scammers fleece this poor man out of his money, they had the audacity to add insult to injury by actually getting him out of his home and onto a bus to head into the city to meet with a fictional person.
They had him hook line and sinker, and they knew they could get him to do anything they wanted if they kept dangling the promise of the cash-laden Samsonite.
When he gets to the hotel lobby, he was going to find no one, then get all confused and try to get in touch with them again. They would probably have vanished, or they would come up with a story about how the lawyer missed his connecting flight in Heathrow because security wouldn’t let him through with a Samsonite full of cash, and they would therefore need him to transfer another $500 to cover the fees of mailing the bag using a special courier since they can’t transfer the money through a bank “for obvious reasons”.
I was processing all this information and contemplating if I should say something to him. It sounded like he was on the last leg of the scam and telling him at this stage won’t bring back his money. I had mixed feelings about breaking the guy’s heart minutes before his highly anticipated lottery win. Is he going to have a heart attack? Is he going to punch me in the face? Will he even listen or will he cling to denial till the bitter end? Why didn’t the other two passengers he was talking to say anything? They just smiled uncomfortably and nodded at his story while trying to avoid eye contact.
Unfortunately, before I could decide on my next move, the bus pulled into the Spring Garden and South Park intersection. He bid everyone goodbye and skipped happily towards the Lord Nelson with business card in hand.
Till this day, I regret not jumping after him to warn him, or to at least offer to go with him to the hotel. I could have told him I was a Canadian lawyer and I can help him make sure his ‘transaction’ was conducted properly, free of charge. He probably would have believed me.
I think there is a site called scambusters419 (419 is the name given to these scams) that has some hilarious dialogues between the scammer and the recipient – the recipient is aware it is a scam but plays along for a while, often subtly pointing out obvious holes in the idea before shrugging them off, funny stuff.