Here's an email that somehow got past my spam filter:
"good_lock1@oi.com.br"
to undisclosed-re.
show details
12:29 pm (5 hours ago)
BILL AND EXCHANGE OF THE FOREIGN REMITTANCE DEPARTMENT OF ZENITH BANK PLC, LAGOS.NIGERIA.
contact me at: mr_nzeribe2@yahoo.it
Dear Friend ,
TRANSFER OF US$7.500, 000 MILLION DOLLARS
I'm Mr Ben Nzeribe, Operations Officer, BILL AND EXCHANGE of THE FOREIGN REMITTANCE DEPARTMENT OF ZENITH BANK PLC, In my department we discovered an abandoned sum of US$7.500,000(Seven million five hundred United states dollars) in an account that belongs to one of our foreign customers who died along with his family in Tuesday, November 2, 1999 in air crash.
Since we got information about his death, we have been expecting his next of Kin to come over and claim his money because we cannot release it unless somebody applies for it as next of Kin or relative to the deceased as indicated in our banking and financial policies but unfortunately we learnt that his supposed next of kin or relation died with him in the accident leaving nobody behind to claim the money.
It is therefore upon this discovery that I decided to make this business proposal to you and release the money to you as the next of kin or relation to the deceased for safety and subsequent disbursement since nobody is coming for it and we don't want this money to go into the Bank treasure as unclaimed bills.
The Banking law and guide line here stipulates that if such money remained unclaimed after Six and half years, the money will be transferred into the Bank treasury as unclaimed fund.
The request for a foreigner as next of kin in this business is occasioned by the fact that the customer was a foreigner and an indigence cannot stand as next of kin to the deceased family. We agreed that 30% of this money will be for you as foreign partner, in respect of your assistance in this business, and 70% would be for me and two of my staff in the business.
Thereafter,I and my colleagues will visit your country for disbursement according to the percentages indicated.Therefore, to enhance the immediate transfer of this fund to you as arranged,you must apply first to the Bank as relation or next of kin of the deceased indicating your private, telephone and fax number for easy and effective communication and location where the money will be remitted. Upon receipt of your reply,
I will send to you by fax or e-mail the text of the application.I will not fail to bring to your notice that this transaction is hitch free and that you should not entertain any atom of fear as all required arrangements have been made for the transfer.You should contact me on MY E-MAIL, as soon as you receive this letter. I decided to contact you as you have products of interest in your part of the world where we can invest our own percentage to avoid peoples awareness as we are civil servants.
Note that we can conclude tis operation within ten banking days.Please keep this very confidential for obvious security reasons. Contact me for more information, all confirmable before you apply if you want.
Trusting to hear from you sortly for a detailed information which are confirmable before you can make up your mind to apply.If however, you are not interested,do let me know by return mail too as I will not contact anybody else until I hear from you.
Please reply me immediately only through this my private email address at: mr_nzeribe2@yahoo.it
For more informations about the crash you can visit this site: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/502503.stm
Regards,
Mr Ben Nzeribe
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Really, does anyone fall for this anymore? Did anyone ever?
Later,
5 people have spouted off:
The first time I got one of the Nigerian scheme e-mails was when I was pretty new to the internet. I stared at it in puzzlement for a minute or so, wondered why in the world someone would send such a thing to a nobody college student, and deleted it, hoping that it was just a scheme but not entirely certain.
Since then, of course, I've seen dozens of variations on the same scheme, and no longer wonder at all before deleting them. Basically, they're hoping for someone who's (a) sheltered; (b) naive; (c) not going to ask/google for more info. I think that if it never worked, we wouldn't keep seeing variations on it. Since it costs them next to nothing to send out the e-mails, it doesn't take a high success rate to pay for itself.
Everytime I get one of these I report the email address to the domain as a spamer. I don't know anyone who has fallen for this, but, as Qalmlea said, it must happen on occasion.
Back in '02 (read "ought two"), I lent a friend $500, which he was supposedly going to use to purchase a plane ticket home. Later, I found out that he was faxing and emailing like crazy one of these "Nigerian" scammers and that my $500 (or at least part of it) was going to some lucky schmuck's pocket. Like Qalmea, I was pretty darn sure it was a scam, but I couldn't tell my friend--partly because it was too late, partly because of his mental state at the time (he was being discharged from the Army for failure to rehabilitate from alcoholism). Of course, after he left the base in Korea, I never saw him (or my $500) again.
That was way back in the early days of such scams, and I'm sure my old friend now knows his folly, both from the massive number of similar emails he receives and the fact that he is not (I'm guessing) a millionaire.
No, man. this is totally legit. They have a link to a BBC news article and everything. So the guy can't spell. Who can?
Why are they always Nigerian? I think I read something about why this is the case - something about Nigerian law maybe?
the word verification on that last one was gugke. I think I'm going to start including the word verifications when they're funny like that
this one is caaybo5g - whoops, maybe that was an S, not a 5.
now it's trouenp
Spout off: