Getting Nigerian Email Scammed, A First-Person Story
Have you ever wondered what it would be like if you responded to one of those Nigerian scam emails, offering fabulous riches for just a small amount of work? Here's the story from an unsuspecting college student who totally fell for one. An impecunious immigrant to this country from rural China, he made the perfect target for "Dr. Mike Johnson." The good doctor was looking to hire some employees. The job? Cashing Traveler's Cheques and forwarding the money on to Nigeria... In other words, the job was to be a victim of check fraud. Here's the story...
First, I received an e-mail from an unknown person; his name in the e-mail is Dr. Mike Johnson. The contents of this e-mail is an announcement of a part time job, he offered 10% of the total money after exchanging traveling cheques, and the remaining 90% was to be money transferred to him via Western Union-Money Transfer. I replied to his e-mail and gave him my personal information and address. I received American Express Traveler's Cheques totaling $2,500 a few days after my e-mail reply. Following this, I went to (redacted) Bank to cash these Traveler's Cheques. I then transferred 90% of this money to Nigeria. A week later, he delivered to me an additional $7,000 in Travelers Cheques. I followed the same process that I did the first time. The total amount money involved was $9,500, 10% ($950) I kept for my fees, $650 was used in transfer fees, and $7900 was transferred to Nigeria.
I understood what the part-time job entailed. I thought that it was legal work. I wanted to give it a try and so replied to the e-mail. Although I did not know whether he would send me back an e-mail the first time, he delivered $2,500 in Travelers Cheques to me. I did not know whether these cheques were real or not because they looked like money. According to Dr. Mike Johnson's directions I had to sign and write a date by myself, and take the cheques to be cashed at the bank. At the bank I asked the bank officer about cashing the cheques. After the bank checked the cheques, the bank officer told me that the cheques could be changed. Then, the bank officer gave me money. The fact ensured my understanding that the job was legal. Then, as a result, I changed a second set of Travelers Cheques totaling $7,000.
On Thursday, I went to the bank office after a phone call regarding the fact that the Travelers Cheques that I had cashed had defaulted. After meeting with the bank officers, they made a phone call to the police station about this problem. After a while, the police came to the bank and we went to the police station to further investigate the matter. Then, at 4:30 a.m., the police went to my room with me and collected all information related to the case, and took some documents (transfer money application forms), some CDs and my PC.
I was very surprised when the bank officers told me that all of the cheques were counterfeit as I did not intend to give the bank fraudulent cheques or otherwise deceive. I did not know whether these were genuine or counterfeit cheques, I thought that the bank cashed them because they were real cheques. Had I known that these cheques were counterfeit, I wound have not cashed them and transferred the funds to a criminal. I think that this is a big problem because I became a victim of a criminal who convinced me to break the law.
Anytime someone wants to do a transaction with you where you're supposed to deposit a check and send part of the balance somewhere else, usually by wire transfer or Western Union, invariably it's a scam. Same thing goes for just about anything emanating out of Nigeria. You might laugh at this student's naivete because it makes you feel like a big man and wonder how anyone could fall for it, but it happens, someone will always fall for these frauds...otherwise the con artists wouldn't sit there at the internet cafe all day sending out emails.
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Comments:
That victim's letter reads like it was one of those nigerian scams...
I wonder, since the Patriot Act gives the feds the ability to monitor just about everything, and they are certainly monitoring the flow of funds to Iraq, Iran and other countries, why not Nigeria?
What is the money trail? Does the bank that cashed the checks take the hit? Does Western Union still collect their fees (giving them a financial incentive to not stem the flow of fraud).
It bothers me that with the huge number of fraudulent checks, money orders, etc... banks really have not stepped up to try to prevent this kind of fraud. They seem to place the entire burden on individuals not being susceptible to "too good to be true" offers.
Last week I received just moments apart two scam e-mails - one saying that I had won the Nigerian Lottery and one from "Wells Fargo". I sent them back to each other, asking them to put my (non-existent) winnings into my (non-existent) Wells Fargo account. Good times.
What's that website where they string the scammers on and on - and eventually try to get them to send a photo in with their website?
@SkokieGuy: Yes, Western Union always collect fees. However, on their website it's written, than sending wires to someone you never met, is pretty much dangerous and at your own risk.
I know someone who fell for a Nigerian scam back in 2004. In his case, he was a college-educated American who was just greedy and learned the hard way it was a scam. His financial situation took a hard beating and he still hasn't recovered financially.
@loganmo: I was thinking the same thing. I was expecting the end of the email to ask for money to help him with his legal problems...
And you'd think Western Union and the other transfer service MoneyGram, would have a system set up to red-flag "to/from Nigeria" transactions by now because this isn't new. Some kind of hold on the funds until verification.
On second thought, it's probably easier for both to just make the money from the wire fees and turn a blind eye to whomever is getting scammed.
I'm just saying..
Yeah I feel sympathy.
Even when people who should know better get caught by these people I have to feel a little sympathy. Mostly the people who get caught by these are at a point in their life where they're vulnerable.
Hope he gets his stuff back, and everything works out for the guy!
Does he get stuck repaying all of the money to the bank?
the website is [www.ebolamonkeyman.com]
Love reading the stories abotu the scammers getting scammed.
Even after all the publicity surrounding these scams, we still have encountered clients who did not know about them and were tempted to respond to those emails.
A couple of years ago, they were using the SPRINT relay service that was designed for the deaf - to call and place orders via stolen credit cards.
We knew firms that were getting about one order request per day.
You have to wonder what type of mentality people like those have - that they do not feel any empathy
Kid should consider himself lucky he isn't locked up forever...Nigerians scammers are sophisticated...lately, they've taken another approach to get people here...by intimidating via death and etc...
Any Nigerians here who can offer better advise :-)??
Wow, they went back to his room at 4:30am? It sounds like he was at the police station for about 12 hours. Ouch. But seriously, if the banker OK's the check you inquire about, is it really your fault? If you can't trust the judgment of the banker at your bank, LITERALLY, whom can you trust?
@Jubilance22
Okay ... I can not feel too much sympathy for that guy XD
A year or two ago I had nothing better to do so I started going along with these scams for a while, having them send me checks and leading them on as if I was going to cash them, playing absolutely stupid like "the bank says there is a problem, send more?" I even got checks sent express FedEx, costing them a significant amount in shipping over time.
I just hope I wasted some of their time and money.
Precisely, Western Union still was able to collect their fee, after all. In that case, why should they care?
@SkokieGuy: I wondered that myself. If AT&T is so eager to hand over all our call logs, conversations, etc., to the feds for whatever (and they probably didn't even ask what that 'whatever' is), why can't they do something about the 419 scammers? Is it too much to ask that our federal government, which is costing trillions of dollars a year to run, actually do something simple like law enforcement?
IIRC, Amazon doesn't service any IP based in the entire country of Nigeria. Even if you're trying to make a legit order for yourself, I guess so much fraud has been committed in that country it's not worth it to Amazon.
I'm going to have to say that this stunk from the beginning to me. I can't imagine that someone was ignorant as he is...
I read that the scammers are of various ages back there in Nigeria...and they do overnight browsing doing all sort of illegal things... btw, I also heard some of the internet cafes charge a lot back there for browsing and these guys pay so much to send scam e-mails...life must really suck over there to be a scammer....I mean what's the economy like overthere? is there anything other thing to do besides over crowding net cafes?
Can't we just turn off the internet in Nigeria?
Unfortunately, after watching Dateline's To Catch and ID Thief, I realized just how many people fall for this crap. And those folks spoke English as a first language.
What is truly sad, is that we have such a terrible system that is so easily defrauded. But yet all the blame falls on the true victim.
Ignorance is no excuse as far as laws go. Just because you didn't know it was illegal, doesn't give you a get out of jail free card. Chances are, he'll be lucky if all he has to do is pay back the checks and not do jail time. What I find to be ironic about this story is the claim that because he was from China he was not aware of these already publicized scam, well then how do you get the message out to people that are like him? Tell them about these scams when as part of the immigration process?
Anything involving Western Union = probably a scam.
Excellent New Yorker article on an otherwise intelligent psychotherapist who got totally taken in by the Nigerian scam.
[www.newyorker.com]
Snoop, it's Ben's opening commentary (that includes bonus word 'impecunious') that indicates the OP was a recent immigrant from China.
The actual letter doesn't include excuses, other than he he went to the bank manager to ask about the checks.
And while ignorance of the law is not a valid defense against criminal charges, is the OP a criminal or a victim?
@ jamesdenver that site is www.quatloos.com, its hilarious and sad all at the same time. I feel for the OP who fell for ths one, i hope he doesnt run into real legal trouble over it. its clear, at least to me, that he was duped and not knowingly committing this fraudulent act. here is the nigerian 419 scam page link on quatloos http://www.quatloos.com/scams/nigerian.htm
Laptops right? I had some calls on my business number about that a few years back. I played along a bit to entertain myself while I listed the laptops I sold for very inflated prices. I acted like I was going to sell it to them, and then backed out. I got a good laugh out of the whole thing.
Once I said I could save them shipping because I was going to visit some old Navy buddies and would be happy to bring the laptops to Virginia with me. Wouldn't be any trouble at all as we were all going to compete in the "Special Forces Games" between the Navy Seals, Marine Recon, Army Rangers, and even those Air Force Pararescue guys. All I'd need was that address and the name of the person I was giving them to. Of course I was joking, I was never a Seal, never had such a fast hangup though.
Too slow, dang it!
I was bored one day when I received a message from a woman on yahoo messenger that I was sure would turn out to be this same scam. I played along as she explained how she was from "the US of America" and was living in Africa and owned an import business selling African crafts and just needed someone in the states to help her cash checks.
I let it play out until she asked for my address so she could send me a check to cash. That's when I gave her the address to the Washington Field Office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
About a week later she contacted me again to ask if I had received the check and threatened that her lawyers were going to get involved if I didn't send her the money. At that point I told her to google the address that I had given her and explained that she had sent her check to the FBI.
[washingtondc.fbi.gov]
FBI Washington Field Office
601 4th St. NW
Washington DC, 20535
On a related note, the page for the Washington FBI has an warning at the top of the page today concerning Nigerian scams.
Part of the scam is effective because until the bank catches on that the money orders are fraudulent, both scammer and the person being scammed actually DO get money out of it. I think that's why people get suckered in.
This actually isn't the first immigrant-related Nigerian scam I've seen. Of course, a lot of us get spammed and we (hopefully) know what's going on. I work at a financial institution and two people who are from Africa got caught up in one of these whirlwinds. They thought that since the person was "from Africa" that everything was ok. Luckily, we caught it before anything bad happened.
The student's bank definately should've investigated his whole situation...
I don't have much sympathy for the guy. I cannot believe people are actually this stupid. NBC did a report about this stuff and even showed people who had a 'fiance' from online who they never met. the 'fiance' would order stuff with a stolen credit card, ship it to the moron, who would then re-ship it to nigeria. i'm sorry but if you are this stupid to fall for these scams then you need to have your computer and internet priveleges taken away.
@jamesdenver: [www.419eater.com]
Absolutely hilarious stuff. They are true masters.
Look for the one where the scammers are made to reenact the famous "Dead Parrot Sketch".
@snoop-blog: According to the story, the benchmark he used for determining if it was legal or not was whether or not the bank actually gave him the money from the checks.
You would think a bank would perform due diligence to determine if they're counterfeit or not before handing out cash. They don't, of course, because the law protects them completely and the onus is on the bank customer lest they be trying to commit fraud.
All these fraud and even money laundering could easily be stopped with a few key laws thrown at institutions powerful enough to implement them. Kinda makes you wonder why Our Holy Politicians haven't done it...
Yeah, just because he is from China doesn't mean he shouldn't think it sounds a little fishy. Getting paid to do absolutely nothing other then cash checks? Come on.
Kid's got a point. The bank said they were good and accepted them. What he did was certainly stupid, but I'd have a hard time calling it wrong. The bank should eat the loss on this one, it was their mistake taking the bad checks.
BRILLIANT!
I'd probably just have the idiots send them to the local field office address to Tim McVeigh, Jesse James, Oliver Cromwell, Vlad Tepes, Reynald du Châtillon, Meyer Lansky, Charles Luciano, Alphonso Capone, Josef Mengele, Josef Dzhugashvili, Máo Zédōng, Terry Nichols, et al.
Ought to really raise some red flags. Probably the irony meter as well...
In this day and age, there has to be some mechanism the banks can follow that would kill these in the bud. Simply having a teller directly call the cashier company to verify the funds before depositing them seems like it'd work. I'd even think a stupidity tax of $30 would be fair.
Simply depositing them, being reasonably certain of the upcoming financial and legal avalanche that's heading the depositor's way seems anti-(dumb)-consumer.
I wonder if the guy ever got his computer back from the police?
That poor kid. It's hard enough learning an entirely new social and legal system without getting a first hand glimpse of the dark side of both.