This week, there is a new detailed account of how Nigerian scammers are still able to snare victims and bleed them for months and even years. John Rempel, of Leamington, Canada
, ultimately lost $150,000 after scam artists convinced him to send money from himself and relatives for over a year. In the process, he quit his job and traveled around the world for what is known as the Nigerian 419 scam.
Rempel was snared with the promise of $12.8 million in windfall funds — an irresistible prize that led him to not just give everything that he had but to borrow $55,000 from an uncle in Mexico and $60,000 from his parents.
He was hooked by scammers in July 2007 with an e-mail from a faux lawyer telling him that a client named David Rempel died in a 2005 bomb attack in London and wanted the money to go to a Rempel. Rempel explained that “It sounded all good so I called him. He sounded very happy and said God bless you.” Then came the little fees and deposits required to free up the money.
He was then asked to pay the taxes on the money (originally $250,000 and then mysteriously reduced to $25,000).
Getting money from an uncle in Mexico, he then flew to London. He met people who showed him a suitcase with $10.6 million in shrink-wrapped U.S. bills. Rempel wanted more proof. His new friends pulled out one bill and “cleansed” it with a liquid “formula,” which washed off some kind of stamp. Rempel was told that process made the money “legal tender.”
They gave him the “formula,” but failed to show up to cleanse the rest of the money. Rempel then broke the bottle of magic formula and they told him that they would get him more, but that it would cost $120,000.
Money kept being demanded and sent by Rempel. Finally, the men claimed that they had been stopped at the airport in New York and needed $12,500 for a bribe. Finally, Rempel got wise and refused. Rempel, his parents and 10-year-old brother Ike drove to New York and searched the airport. To their disappointment, the men were not there.
What is striking about this account is that level of contact with these men. If Rempel can meet with these men and telephone them, why can’t our own investigators trap such scammers?
Recently, we learned of a woman who gave Nigerians $400,000 in such a scam. These stories show why these scammers need only to score in less than one percent of recipients of emails to make considerable money.
For the full story, click here.
Asking questions are really fastidious thing if you are not understanding something completely, however this post offers pleasant understanding even.
I get these scammer e-mails in my mail every day.
Every once in a while, one strikes me as funny because of the audacity, or the name of the person, or the spelling… Anyway, I started writing back to these people just to poke fun at them, but in a way that sounds like I am falling for the scam.
You might get a kick out of reading my responses (sometimes the scammers even write back). I post them with the original names and e-mail Subject lines (to be searchable, in hopes of alerting other potential victims) at a blog I created just for my sarcastic responses, called Scam and Eggs.
Perhaps this is a wrong attitude, but he was scammed because of greed. Even so, I have a difficult time understanding how in this day and age, how one can fall for such a scam. This would seem to fall under the category of “I have a beach front property to sell you in Arizona for a great price if you send in your money before the end of the month.”
On this episode of This American Life, some guys doled out vigilante justice to a Nigerian scammer, basically turning the tables.
http://www.thisamericanlife.org/Radio_Episode.aspx?episode=363
RCMP
No doughnuts. Bad fingers.
Pardon me. Way to go RMCP!
Ah, the smell of Neocon propaganda in the morning. Smells like . . . fear.
The Nigerian 419 scams and our law enforcement’s seeming inability to apprehend these criminals is due to several factors. One of the primary reasons though is target selection and human behavior. Many victims of this scam are not sophisticated and the embarrassment of it surely makes this an under reported crime. In addition, most who fall prey to this are not the “uber wealthy”. The pattern of who is getting the preferred treatment by the government, including law enforcement, after 8 years of Bush is clear for all to see. We’re the victims big donors of some sort, count on the Feds giving the full court press instead of usual result in these kinds of cases, “Sorry, we’ll take your report and make clucking noises of sympathy but we can’t help you.” But citizens getting in positions that, had law enforcement been involved, arrests could have been made?
That IS embarrassing, just not for the victims.
Way to go, FBI!
Obama Keeps Renditions Tool Option For CIA
By Greg Miller | Washington Bureau
Reuters
February 1, 2009
WASHINGTON — Most of the CIA’s secret prisons may be shuttered. Harsh interrogation techniques are mostly off-limits. Guantanamo Bay may eventually go back to being a wind-swept naval base on the southeastern corner of Cuba.
But even while dismantling the more controversial and now publicly known aspects of these programs, President Barack Obama left an equally controversial counter terrorism tool intact.
Under executive orders issued by Obama last week, the CIA was assured it still has authority to carry out what are known as renditions, or the secret abductions and transfers of prisoners to countries that cooperate with the U.S.
Current and former U.S. intelligence officials said the rendition program is poised to play an expanded role under Obama.
chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-renditions_31jan31,0,2998929.story