The Nigerian Scam - $7 Million In My State Alone!
The Nigerian Scam - $7 Million In 2 Months In My State Alone!"A recent study by Queensland Police detectives found that known victims from that state alone handed over $7 million to Nigerian crooks over a two-month period." The Australian
The Nigerian scam is where you receive an email from someone whose rich relative (or an African dictator or business success) has died and they state they need to get massive funds out of the country.
"I need help - I'll pay you $2.4 million US for an hour's work......"If you help them by supplying your bank account details, they'll cut you in for 10 or 15 or 20%. How very generous.
Then what generally happens is you 'need' to pay some costs to help them out and on it goes.
3 Of These A Day - All Nonsense
I get probably 3 of these emails a day. All fake. All nonsense.
I live in Queensland. Queensland is a state here in Australia of 3.9 million people. It's massive in land area, but not in people. And these scam emails have netted an amazing $7 million in just 2 months.
I guess people who aren't on the Internet as long as I am (and have been) simply aren't aware of these sort of scams (like 'phising' - that's where you get an email from your bank asking you to confirm your details. They'll often say someone has been tampering with your account and you need to change your email.).
A Bank Will Never Ask You To Login To Your Account From An Email....Or Ever Ask For Your Password
A bank will never, ever ask you to login to your account from an email.
What the scammers do is just send that same email - let's same it says it's from the National Australia Bank - to 2 million people.
A good % will be with the NAB. A % will think it's legitimate. A % will click on the link in the email, be taken to the fake site that will look exactly the same as the real NAB site and then put in their full details including password. And BANG....the crook now has your full details and password.
The bottom line - don't give your bank details (in any way, shape or form) to anyone on the Internet.
And if it sounds too good to be true, then it probably is.
Brendon
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The basis of the scam (sometimes known to fraud squads as the Spanish Prisoner scam) goes back hundreds of years.
There is a hard abd fast rule about such attempts to part a "mark" from his money. You can't cheat an honest man. Every variation on this scheme involves the promise of financial gain that the "mark" knows s/he did not earn and does not own. So the huge numbers. world-wide who have been trapped serve to show just how much larceny really exists in people's hearts ... or bums ... or minds ... wherever it resides.
Interesting stuff, much more a commentary on human nature than the Internet
The scam of wiring money has gone to a new depth. The scammers are appearing on dating Web sites, like Yahoo Personals. They spend weeks or months developing a relationship with the victim. They go as far as setting up profiles with a picture taken from a modeling Web site or a MySpace profile. Their profiles use generic quips like “kind, caring, and searching for love.”
Then they claim they are stuck somewhere and can't cash their money orders. Thus the scam of wiring money begins.