Nigerian Letter Scams: Part II

Here are some more of those ‘Nigerian’ letter type scams for your amusement. I am presenting them to you from the latest one I received to some of the others before it.

This one arrived in my email inbox on September 17th 2009

Hello Friend,

I am Mr. Robert Kenshole, a British Attorney based in Manchester, United Kingdom and the personal Attorney to Late Mr. Christopher Sarfin. Late Mr. Christopher Sarfin was a private oil consultant/ contractor with the Shell Oil Company in Saudi Arabia before his death, hereinafter shall be referred to as my client. On the 23rd day of August 2000, my client and his wife along with their two children were among the victims of Gulf Air Flight that Crashed into Persian Gulf near Bahrain Aired August 23, 2000 - 2:50 p.m. ET as reported on Cable Network News (CNN).

Since then, I have made several enquiries from the French embassies to locate his next of kin or any of his extended relatives, but all to no avail. My client made a deposit in a bank at Manchester valued presently at $29,800,000.00 {Twenty Nine Million, Eight Hundred Thousand United States Dollars} and the bank has issued me an official notification to provide his next of kin or beneficiary by will, otherwise the account will be confiscated within the next thirty (30) working days. Since I have been unsuccessful to locate any of my late client's relatives for over three (3) years now, I seek your consent to permit me to present you as the next of kin of my late client’s estate so that the proceeds of this account would be transferred to you.

Already, I have set out modalities for achieving my aim of appointing a next of kin as well as transfer the money out of this country, for us to share the money in the ratio of 53% for me and 35% to you, The 2% of the fund will serve as reimbursement of expenses any of us will make in the course of this transaction. While we shall collectively donate the remaining balances of 10% to any Charity Organizations of our choice. It is my intention to achieve this transfer in a legitimate way, all I required is your trust, honesty, co-operation, financial support and confidentiality to enable us sees this transaction through. This is a very legal business that I am very sure of its success and is absolutely 100% risk free. For further procedures relating to this transaction, kindly signify your willingness to assist me by sending me an email only if you are very serious and having the financial capability/power to help me, then your prompt response shall include the following information:

1. Your direct telephone number and complete location address in your country.

2. Your Occupation.

Once I receive your positive response, I will then provide you with more detail information on how we shall immediately proceed and legally claim these funds for onward transfer to your nominated bank account.

I look forward to receiving your prompt response.

Thank you,

Mr. Robert Kenshole
Note: You should send your response to this email: rob.kenshole206@msn.com

My observation re this kind of message

First of all, it is highly unlikely that a law firm would initially contact me by email. They would send me a letter. When I inherited money from my mother, her U.S. attorney sent me a letter ahead of time. With respect to Robert Kenshole, if he was a legitimate lawyer, he would explain why he believes that I am related to the late Mr. Christopher Sarfin especially since my name is in not even remotely connected with the Sarfin family; if such a family really exists. What was really stupidity on the part of this scammer is his use of the word, ‘attorney’. Lawyers in the United States use that word whereas in the UK, the word is ‘solicitior’. A lawyer in the U.K. would never describe himself as an ‘attorney’.

There is a large collection of fraud and bogus emails that attempt to scam the recipient into sending money to receive non-existent fortunes or inheritances as a result of someone perishing in a plane crash. Scammers use tragedies of all kinds to prey on the emotions of its intended victims and this includes other messages focused on Auto Crash Scams, Cancer Victim Scams and Dying Benefactor Scams.

One sent out in March 2007, began in the following manner.

My Dear Friend,

“My name is barrister Peter Crown a legal practitioner and the personal attorney to one of the passengers (Mr.John) of the Belleview Boeing 737 plane crash in which 117 persons died on 22nd of October 2005,my client died along side with his entire family.”

My observations with respect to this kind of scam

Did you notice that both salutations have the word, “friend’ in them and both end with a coma instead of a colon. This means that the same person is ending these messages. Further, generally Middle East and East Indian and Pakistani people us the suffix ‘Mr.’ in front of Christian names so I have to presume that the author of this latest message is originally from one of the countries in those parts of the world.

Proof of that can probably be established considering the fact that he is unfamiliar with sentence structure. In the beginning of his message, he said, "My name is barrister Peter Crown..." His name isn't 'barrister Peter Crown'. His name is 'Peter Crown'. His real stupidity stare you right in your face when you read the entire sentence.

"“My name is 'barrister' Peter Crown a legal practitioner and the personal 'attorney' to one of the passengers..."

What is interesting in this particular scam is the use of the word, ‘barrister.’ No barrister would ever send a letter pertaining to an estate because in the U.K. and all commonwealth countries, a barrister represents clients in court whereas the solicitor does all the paperwork. The term 'attorney' is used only in the United States so what we have here is a scammer who uses one word that is applicable to the U.K.(barrister) and another word that is applicable to the U.S.(attorney) Where is his firm? Is it in the U.K. or is it in the U.S.? It can't be in both countries.

Where the second scammer differs from the first one is that he is asking for 50% of the monies from the estate. That should tell anyone that this man is a scammer. No legitimate law firm would ever do that. Further, even if a law firm was involved, why didn’t the scammer state the name of the law firm?

These kinds of scams are almost certainly scams where you will be asked to pay some type of fee before you can claim the money or you will be presented with a phony check and asked to return a share to the sender. Can you believe it? There are dummies out there who will actually send thousands of their own dollars to these scammers without first waiting for the scammer’s cheques to clear.

With respect to the email message pertaining to Mr. Christopher Sarfin, a similar letter went out in the Internet on May 4th, 2009. It began:

"Hello, I am Mr. Geoffrey Owen Kenshole, a British Attorney based in Manchester, United Kingdom and the personal Attorney to Late Mr. Christopher Sarfin. Late Mr. Christopher Sarfin was a private oil ..."

I find it interesting that this scammer screwed up so foolishly. In his message to me, he is Mr. Robert Kenshole whereas in the message he published on the Internet on May 4th, 2009, he is Mr. Geoffrey Owen Kenshole. Further, why does he preface the name with Mr? It is obvious that Robert, Geofrey and Owen are the names of males. So he doesn’ have to use the suffix Mr to establish in the recipient’s mind that he is a man.

This is proof that you should always go to Google and start searching for anything relating to the scammer’s names. That way, you will soon discover if you are dealing with a scammer. However, even if there is no other instance in which the scammer’s name shows up, that doesn’t meant that he or she isn’t a scammer.

This following message was emailed around the world on the 14th of January 2007.

Dear Friend,

“I am Pedro Diego Esq. an attorney to Christian Eight Mason, a deceased Immigrant and property magnate, who was based in Spain, Also referred to as my client. On the 25th of July 2000 , my client, his wife and their two Children died in the Air France concord plane crash bound for New York in their plan for a world cruise.”

My observations re this scam

Did you notice the similarities between this message and the first one in which they included the following passage in their messages.

“….referred to as my client.”

I don’t know if these two scammers is really one person or that two scammers are connected with the same scam enterprise and as such, they use a template when creating their letters but it is obvious that these people are trying to scam us out of our money.

Obviously, this scammer doesn't realize that the word, 'concord' when describing a plane, must be capitalized since that is the name of the plane.

Here is a different kind of scam. This one showed up in my in box on September 8, 2009

The National Lottery
P O Box 1010
Liverpool, L70 1NL
UNITED KINGDOM
(Customer Services)
Ref: UK/9580X2/45
Batch: 062/01/ZY469

WINNING NOTIFICATION:

“It is obvious that this notification came to you as a surprise, but please finds time to read it carefully as we congratulate you over your success in the following official publication of results of the e-mail electronic online draw held by UK NATIONAL LOTTERY.

“We happily announce to you the draw (#942) of the UK NATIONAL LOTTERY, online Sweepstakes International program held on saturday, 1th of september, 2009. It is yet to be unclaimed and you are getting the FINAL NOTIFICATION as regards this. Your e-mail address attached to ticket number:16474620545 188 with Serial number 5268/02 drew the lucky numbers:4-7-9-11-15-30 (bonus no.25), which subsequently won you the lottery in the 2nd category i.e match 5 plus bonus.

"You have therefore been approved to claim a total sum of 1,000,000 (One million pounds sterling) in cash credited to file KTU/9013115308/03. This is from a total cash prize of 10,000,000 shared amongst the(5)lucky winners in this category i.e Match 5 plus bonus.All participants for the online version were selected randomly from World Wide Web sites through computer draw system and extracted from over 100,000 unions,associations, and corporate bodies that are listed online. This promotion takes place weekly. To file for your claim, please contact our fiduciary agent:

Dr. Pinkett Griffin
Email: ukagent400@yahoo.com.hk

Contact him by sending him with the underlisted informations :

1.Name.
2.Address.
3.Nationality.
4.Age.
5.Occupation.
6.Phone/Fax.


My observation re this kind of message

I searched Google and there is a NATIONAL LOTTERY listed. It is in Liverpool, U.K. but I noticed that its email email address ends with @national-lottery.co.uk and not with @yahoo.com.hk

The UK NATIONAL LOTTERY scam email claims that the recipient has won money in an international lottery. The email message is an attempt to initiate a dialogue with potential victims and subsequently trick them into sending money to the scammers responsible. There is no prize money.

This scam email generally includes a link to a legitimate lottery website in an attempt to add credibility to the information enclosed in the message your receive from the scammer.

In the legitimate NATIONAL LOTTERY, (like all legitimate lotteries) you have to buy your tickets to win. They do not give away prizes at random to people who don’t buy a ticket from them. In fact, I have never even heard of a lottery that gives away money to persons who haven’t purchased tickets from them first.

The word 'informations' is not a word in the English language. the word 'information' is both singular and plural and doesn't need the letter 's' placed at the end of the word to make it plural. It like spelling the plural word of 'sheep' as 'sheeps'. Further, his word, underlisted should be hyphenated so that it reads; under-listed. Further, his word, 'saturday' should be written as 'Saturday' and his word, 'september' should be written as 'Septrember' and the date he wrote;'1th' should have been written as '1st'. This is proof that this scammer is uneducated.

This message arrived in my in box two days earlier.

BANANA ONLINE LOTTERY PROMOTION
P O Box 578E
London, L80 3ML
UNITED KINGDOM
(Customer Services)

http://www.bananalotto.co.uk/inscription.php

Hello Internet User,

“Your email address have been randomly selected to receive a £1,000,000.00 CHEQUE to be redeemed in the next 2weeks.I am thrilled to bring you this official notice which confirms The Write-a-CHEQUE Committee's certification of THIS EMAIL OWNER as a guaranteed eligible candidate. This is not in error.This Email address is the legitimate winner of this cheque.Even now, you probably thought this could never happen, that you could become A WRITE-A-CHEQUE WINNER. But it's absolutely true: ALL Prizes won in the WRITE-A-CHEQUE RANDOM SWEEPSTAKES S3 are 100% GUARANTEED to be redeemable by the confirmed winners.Congratulations and be sure to redeem this CHEQUE before the 2weeks is up, otherwise the next eligible candidate will be contacted.You have won today, reply to this email immediately on how to claim your prize sum of £1,000,000.00 GBP sterling below.” NOTE: GBP means, Great Britain Pound.

CONTACT INFORMATION
GERALD WATSON
Geraldwatsonclaimdept@discuz.org
Tel: +44 (0)703 190 1802

PAYMENT PROCESSING FORM
1.FULL NAMES:
2.ADDRESS:
3.SEX:
4.AGE:
5.MARITAL STATUS:
6.OCCUPATION:
7.E-MAIL ADDRESS:
8.TELEPHONE NUMBER:
9.AMOUNT WON:
10. COUNTRY:

Regards,
GERALD WATSON & The Write-A-CHEQUE Committee

My observation with respect to this scam

You may have noticed that the messages sent to my email address all asked for my occupation. Why would anyone knowing my occupation, assist a legitimate sender in determining if I am the right person. For example, if they selected me to be the recipient of a lottery prize at random, then all they would need is my name and address so that they can send the prize to me at my address.

The last scammer asked me for my full names, address, sex, age, marital status, occupation, e-mail address, telephone number and the country I live in. Imagine what an identity thief could do with all that information in his hands. He could apply for credit cards in my name and even apply for a passport in my name. Once that happened, I would be plagued for the rest of my life with the crimes that imposter would commit in my name.

Never, ever give that kind of information to anyone you don’t know personally or have legitimate business with, especially over the Internet.

Also, I noticed that after the salutation, the sender typed a comma instead of a colon just like some of the other mentioned in this essay. Obviously, the senders are working from the same scamming firm.

Please note that the spelling of 'cheque' is quite correct as it is the way it is spelled in Great Britain and all commonwealth countries such as Canada whereas the Americans spell it as 'check'.

Here is another one I received.

QUEEN'S LOTTERY
Ref: QNL/9420X2/68
Batch: 074/05/QNL369

WINNING NOTIFICATION!!!

“We happily announce to you the draw (#80) of the QUEEN'S LOTTERY, 2009. Your e-mail address attached to ticket number: 56475600545 188 with Serial number 5368/02 drew the lucky numbers: 12-18-22-33-43-48-25, which subsequently won you the lottery in the 1st category. You have therefore been approved to claim a total sum of $1.5million USD(One Million Five Hundred Thousand million United State Dollars)in cash credited to file KTU/9023118308/09.

“All participants were selected randomly from World Wide Web sites through computer draw system and extracted from over 100,000 unions, associations, and corporate bodies that are listed online. For security reasons, you are advised to keep your winning code confidential till your money is remitted to your designated bank account . This is part of our precautionary measure to avoid unwarranted abuse of this program. Please be warned. Queen's Lottery is promoted and sponsored by a conglomerate of multinational companies in commonwealth countries as part of their social responsibility to the citizens in the communities where they have operational base.

“To file for your claim,you are required to forward the following details to our verification department:

Full names................
Residential address.......
Phone number................
Occupation..............
Sex.................
Age.............
Nationality................

Contact Person: Mr Richard White
Email: claims_dispatchunit1109@queens-lotto.co.cc

Yours sincerely,
Harry White.
Online coordinator for QUEEN'S LOTTERY International Program.

Warning!!!

“Fraudulent emails are circulating that appear to be using Queen's Lottery addresses, but are not from The Queen's Lottery.PLEASE REPORT IMMEDIATELY TO CUSTOMER CARE/COMPLAINTS DEPT via this email:customercareunit@queens-lotto.co.cc

My observation with respect to this scam

Many of these scammers will place in their message warnings about possible fraud but you can be sure that when you contact them at the email address listed in the warnings, they will tell you that their message is legitimate.

Notice that with respect to the contact person, he prefaces his name with the word, 'Mr'. That isn't necessary since it has to be obvious that the name 'Richard' is a man's name. Sometimes, a man's name may be confusing to some people, such as my first name which is 'Dahn'. For this reason, I place the letters, 'esq.' after my last name because that is used to point out to the recipient of my communication that I am a man and not a woman. I once made the mistake of not doing that when I applied for a job as a physical education director in a correctional institution. The letter I got back from the government started off as "Dear Miss. Batchelor:" I didn't get the job because they were looking for a man to fill the post. By the time I got back to them to explain that I was a man, the post had already been filled by another man.

This next one is interesting because the scammer is close to my city.

Dear Valued Member
Account Alert

"Due to the congestion in our Rogers! servers,there would be removal of all unused Rogers! Accounts.You will have to confirm if your E-mail is still active by filling out your login info below after clicking the reply button, or your account will be suspended within 24 hours for security reasons."
Your personal information:-
User name:................................(example@rogers.com)
Password:..................................
Date of Birth:.............................
Country :...................................


“After updating your account information,your account will not be interrupted and will continue to work as normal.Thanks for your attention to this request. We apologize for any inconvenience.

“Warning!!! Account owner that refuses to update his or her account before one weeks of receiving this warning will lose his or her account permanently."

My observation with respect to this scam

I contacted Rogers, my Internet provider and they confirmed what I suspected., The sender is a scammer seeking information from me. I ignored his message and despite that, I still get everything from my Rogers provider that I am entitled to so obviously I didn’t lose my account permanently by ignoring the warning sent to me by the scammer.

How stupid is that scammer? Rogers wouldn’t need my email address considering the fact that if the above scammer really was part of Rogers, he would already have my email address otherwise how would he have contacted me by email in the first place? That by itself tells me that the fool is a scammer.

Dozens of scammers were recently arrested in the US and Egypt who were members of a identity theft ring. The indictment in the US accuses the ring of running a 'phishing' scheme using computer intrusion and fraud to obtain personal information allowing them to withdraw money from their bank accounts. The technique of phishing is to get victims to answer the scammer's email questions directed to them by claiming that there is a need to update particulars of their accounts, passwords and account numbers.

In conclusion

There are over a hundred thousand victims each year who have been scammed out of their money by these crooks. That is because they believed what the scammers were telling them.

Here are the best things that you should do to make sure that you aren't parting with your money or credibility by those who send these stupid messages.

1.If it sounds too good to be true, it probably isn't true.
2.Look for spelling mistakes, bad punctuation and wrong terms.
3.Go to Google and check to see if it is a scam.
4.Ask the senders for more details.
5.Never send them money.
6.Never disclose information you would never give to a stranger.

I can’t imagine any of my many readers of my blog being stupid enough to fall for these scams because for them to read my blog and understand what I am saying means that my readers are pretty smart people. Despite that gratuitous compliment, I would be remiss if I didn’t admit that there have been many very smart people scammed out of their money by fraudsters. Some even thought they were buying the Brooklyn Bridge.

Speaking of buying, I have a nice piece of land in Florida that is for sale. The centre of it is exactly 46 miles north west of Palm Beach, 116 miles south of Orlando and 127 miles south east of Tampa. The property is huge; in fact, it is so huge, your nearest neighbour at the border of my property is at least 11 miles east of you in a small town called Belle Glade. It is so huge, that if you look at any map of Florida, you will see that my property is actually disclosed on the map. There is all the fresh water on the property you would ever need and you can even fish for 'large mouth bass' anywhere on the property. And most importantly; there is no swamp of any kind on the property at all.