Well, this seems to be a new wrinkle

Started by evensgrey, August 21, 2018, 12:52:39 PM

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Something amusing turned up in my spam folder today:

QuoteHow are you today.
The below payment has been awarded to you by the Nigeria
Government/World Bank to compensate you on the past experience had with
the
Nigeria scammers.
I write to inform you that we have already sent you 5,000.00
through
Western Union as we have been given the mandate to transfer your
full
compensation payment total sum of Five Hundred Thousand Euros
(EUR) 500,000.00 via Western Union by the Government.
I have on a good authority email you the MTCN and senders
details to enable you pick up the first 5,000.00,EUR and confirm receipt
to
us
so as to enable us wire the next EUR5,000.00 by tomorrow and subsequent
ones since we can only send EUR5,000.00 a day.

Please pick up this information and get to any western union in
your
country to pick up the 5,000.00 EUR and email the Western Union
outlets in charge of the payment so that they could send you another
payment
tomorrow.

I don't think I've seen this applied to the old Nigerian Letter Scam before.

There's more to the email, but what I'm not seeing is how they get money from me.  (The idea of using Western Union is amusing, to.  This would take over three months to complete if they were going to actually do it, and cost around $5000 to do.  To move money outside the Telex system.)

August 23, 2018, 05:28:00 AM #1 Last Edit: August 23, 2018, 05:43:51 AM by Ibrahim90
QuoteThis would take over three months to complete if they were going to actually do it, and cost around $5000 to do.

Huh, that amount recalls this:

Quote from: Some Nigerian(?) assholeI write to inform you that we have already sent you 5,000.00
through
.

The idea here (maybe? :P) is that for you to pick up this mythical $5,000, you will, in effect, have to pay the scammer that processing fee, so that your mythical millions will arrive (5,000 dollars at a time). In the time it takes to process all this, Mr. Asshole will have long ago disappeared, leaving you, $50-$5,000 or more poorer. If that doesn't work, then your (inevitable) need to provide them your banking information or ID will do you in. Remember, it's (theoretically), costing the scammer $5,000, to transfer the >$500,000 they propose to send you (I'm too lazy atm to calculate the exchange between Euro and dollar; they're both punk-ass currencies anyway; why can't they be like the Kuwaiti Dinar :P?). Also remember that Mr. Asshole is clearly stating he has no control of the money; some other dude is (or in this case, his Govco). Therefore, for him to move that money, he "needs your help".

So put another way: he's perhaps asking your to pay $50 for every $5,000; to get the full half-million, you'd have to do 100 of these--$5,000 dollars.

Don't believe me? Note this part, and peruse it carefully:

Quote from: same asshole, who clearly thinks punctuation is for sissies...I have on a good authority email you the MTCN and senders details to enable you pick up the first 5,000.00,EUR and confirm receipt
to
us
so as to enable us wire the next EUR5,000.00 by tomorrow and subsequent
ones since we can only send EUR5,000.00 a day.

I know from experience this only makes sense if the idea is for you to give them the money (Because I've done this to help my dad).

At least, that's the theory. This presupposes that the person would be making a profit out of this.


If this still doesn't make sense to you form the viewpoint of the prospective victim, then congrats: this email isn't meant for you. It's meant for idiots.
"All you guys complaining about the possibility of guy on guy relationships...you're also denying us girl on girl.  Works both ways if you know what I mean"

-Jesse Cox