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Thank you for all of your work and effort on this post to protect the VR community, Xzavier.

As a fraud and deception, researcher I say right on for this thread.

To alert is the first step, the second step, is to pass the word along.

When something sounds to good to be true, it is, just because someone doesn't mention money, there are other interest to be gained through fraud.. Identity Information is being sought almost more then money on-line.

_I know someone who got one of these letters and decided to play a trick on the person sending the letter. The man actually went to such great lengths as finding a random building and writing "__________ & ___________ forever!" on a pink piece of paper. Poor guy. But he made up this story that someone as in need of this guy's help and that he needed 5000 dollars. It was funny. At the same time, I get a lot of those letters, but after a while, I began to figure out what they looked like when they are there, and so I do not open them anymore._

It's my pleasure. The VR community has been good to me so it's the least I can do. After all, in this crazy world, if we don't watch out for each other who will? :)

The variation is they send you "money orders, forged or altered" to a person, who is told that they simply need the person to pay a" fee" for something.. the person noticing the money is far more then the fee. Will likly take the money orders to their bank and cash them.. the bank after processing them.. (the damage is already done) finds them fraudulent.. the person is out .. unless they didn't send the fee. I have a friend who cashed the ones a "lady' sent for a keyboard.. 2 times what the keyboard was asking.. plus "shipping and handling"

Thank you for letting us know

Some people have way too much spare time on their hands to create crap like this just like computer viruses.

i almost fell for one of these a few years a go when the guy saying he was from Nigera or something like that saying he would give me a million dollars or some other large about of money.

You know I just got one of those from a guy claiming that he was in the U.S. military and that he needed someone to store all the money that the military took from sadam. I was like there isn't no way that the 5 guys that captured him was let have that money. I've had others too. I just ignore them.

Leslie Fountain, UK, set himself on fire in 2004 due to depression (not being able to pay of his $45,000 in debts) and died from his injuries.

George Makronalli, Greece, was murdered in 2004 after responding to a 419.

From 94'-97' a total of 15 people were murdered and at least 8 have been kidnapped.

A lot of people think these things are a joke but they can be very serious, even politicians and other officials have fallen victim. A former mayor of Northampton, UK was kidnapped in 2001.

This and many other so obvious spam tactics scarily do work. Thank you for the notice.

Just a note, should it read secret service rather than secrete?

What amazes me is the people that fall for this.

Like when receiving an e-mail and sometimes sent by home address too, stating that you have won something and that they needed your credit card number.

If it was won, why would they need the credit card number, secondly, how if you didn't play at anything?

Or being asked for a relationship and get asked your credit number. If the person wants a relationship, why would they be interested in their bank account number?

Or people who ask you to transfer your money to their account, no thanks.

People should ask these questions before falling into such traps.

Anyway thanks for this information and help provided.

I get plenty of these emails I just delete them. U also may receive ones that u won the UK or Irish lottery. Some will also say they came from Yahoo, microsoft or some other big company. But these are scams also. Its easy to make phony email addresses to make them look real

A great thread posted to help warn VR of such scams. I myself have recieved these and I always delete them.

They go to great lengths to scam someone and even harm people so I am very glad that you have put this up Thank you Xzavier.

I've seen a lot of these kinds of e-mails and messages come through VR. One of my family members who at one time had an account on here almost fell for one. She was trying to convince me to go 'in' on it with her. It was really ridiculous! How could anyone believe that someone would be willing to part with that much money for absolutely nothing?

It's a shame. I've seen some elderly people around the area get their identities stolen because they wanted to trust and believe the best out of people. The internet is a good thing when used right.

Wow, This actually happened to my sister. She had to go to the FBI and had a huge scare and mess to clean up. She caught on before there was a $ exchange. However had to change all her accounts and it was very stressful. TY xavier for posting this as guidance to those people who are gullible.

Thanks for the excellent subject. As a new generation start using the web, the scam are becoming a problem. The following are some of the famous:

MR HIETER HAENSGEN FROM: DIPLOMAT HIETER HAENSGEN
Mrs.Almirah Ahmed Please reply to: akajiaku@live.co.uk
Dr.Mugu Egodi URGENT ATTENTION NEEDED
Dr Bennad C Williams YOUR URGENT PARTNERSHIP NEEDED
roseopoku Gazeta.pl Sincerely Mrs. Rose Opoku
sdassociato@ virgilio. it NEDERLAND DAYZERS:
karimzeina@cantv.net From miss zeinab karim

last year i recieved a message that this nigerian needed help transferring funds that she was a political figure over there and her family had been tortured and murdered ... my heart broke and i gave all info i had bank account # the whole nine yards she called me at my home saying i needed to have 2k in the bank that there was not enough to make the transfer i begged friends and family to help me secure the money for this person ... i felt a fool after i saw a news report on TV about this very scam she kept calling me and asking me to get the money i said i was sorry i could not come up with it and soon the calls stopped .... i only hope that if a person who really needs help comes around they get that help with all the scammers how can you tell who needs and who dont WHEN ALL YOU WANT IS TO BE A GOOD HUMANITARIAN

I get these all the time in my email. It blows my mind that anyone could fall for such a scam, however, it must happen for it to be such a broad scam that covers everything from email, myspace, and now, Vr. Thank you for your work on this thread to bring more awareness to this scam. It is very kind and thoughtful of you to do so.

Two well known Esate scams show that this crime pays .. Big one a few eras back .. The Drake Fotune Scam.. Bu "Sadie Whitticker", and Oscar Hartznell, "Sadie Whitticker" was never brought to trial.. Hartznell live a lavish life in England on the procedes from the scam, that promised large returns for "aid" money used in the claiming the estate of Francise Drake
and the portion due from the English coffers. A scam of contagious proportions, people that are duped in such scams or at least feel duped, are likely to graft the process to cover their loses.. a sad accomplise by proxy effect.. more current is the God Wants you to Roll Estate Scam.. Cars (that never existed) are sold from a "held up estate". The delivery date is advanced and advanced, 21 million dollars .. 8.7 million unaccounted for. Two guys and a few ladies where indicted. That was using church going folk. A preset network.

Charity fraud is a perifial problem as well. Thankfully there are as many education , and sites that teach detection and prevention(as opposed to inciting panic, commonly used and exploited by phoachers and fleecers).

Banks are now watching for spikes in the accounts of elder customers. A sign that something is shifting back to those that want to keep not only themselves alert, but there family and friends.

The number "419" refers to the article of the Nigerian Criminal Code (part of Chapter 38: "Obtaining Property by false pretences; Cheating") dealing with fraud.


I just had to look this up... it was killing me to not know what 419 meant!

There's a website (I can't remember it for the life of me) where some guy turns the scams around and makes the scammers lose money. And it's perfectly legal. I read the entirety of one of these, and it was brilliant. The scammer ended up losing a couple thousand dollars at least. Pretty funny stuff.

Thanks much for this thread. Can't be too careful online these days.

Thanks for posting the information. We almost got caught up in one of these. It came from the Catholic Association Branch of Chicago. If we didn't have the caller ID set up on the cell phone we would have never known that the place that they wanted us to send money to was in fact a lie in itsself.

Its just sad to know things are getting this way and whats worse is that some use the information that they receive for identy theft as well.

Nonprofit organizations have been targets of Site and voice mail hackers
the reason for this was uncovered in a scam that had legit front cover. down to the letter head, the only changes where for money routing.

Not all charities are crooked or laundering operations but it is good to research any solicitation for donation as well. look the number up, use third party referances, something scammer fund raisers don't want you to think of..

We did look into the web site that they had set up. And everything seemed legit but you are very right not all nonprofit organizations are like this. I had honestly wondered if someone had not gotten the information about the charity and tried to use it to their advantage.

very easy to do. A scam involving chocolate bars.. rewrapped as charity fundraisers netted a large profit from whole sale waste.. that is right the chocolate is usually recovered product. the number on the bar and the labels pretense is charity. but the bar is not. third party info and research will most likely expose such fraud.. usually practiced on prayer group or home study church groups.

I'm sure Xzavier had to cut down his article by several pages. The shear scope of tactics, schemes and assets are amazing. These things take on all forms and prey on our human nature to be helpful.

I saw someone mentioned the meaning of "419" it is indeed the Nigerian title code for such frauds.

I have "taken the bait" several times and followed the trail as much as possible. They can produce legit. news articles, company names, well forged documents (in some cases real ones) to back up their claims. Funny thing is the moment you show any sign of skepticism they become very agitated and many times will just send you a "f* off" letter.

Of course the moment you reply/open the email your now going to get slammed with more. So I suggest erasing all of these messages and leave the situation alone (don't play with them) unless your certain you know what your doing.

And remember you can be used for promotion. So and so is doing this as well. Proxy Promo, even "free" things. Can be a planted endorsement. a 500 dollar gift card.. but first you need to send out this message. that is right it is likely that those people you recruit will be looking for you with some complex questions about that cool gift card deal. .

Then there are those that mock those that do such things..

http://www.quatloos.com/brad-c/Scanlan.htm

Yea the funny thing is that the grant info they sell you is public knowledge, the forms may need to be sent away for but anyone can apply.. the process is very involved.. companies and universities, have departments that fill out grants professionally.

Good work Xavier :-)

Have you thought about putting this kind of information into a VR article? You could perhaps gather up screenshots of phishing emails and things, to warn everyone else of the dangers lurking in cyberspace, not just within the pages of VR...

Maledicta

Thank you :) The thread is doubled as an article published the same day as this opened. Feel free to rate it.

There is a lot of information that could be added into another Online Safety article, which I may write. But, at the moment 419's and other similar scams are the biggest threat to VR.

I have actually gotten one of these types asking me to cash checks for someone in Nigeria and then send them the cash. I corresponded with this person for a bit and got all their contact information let them send the checks to me and handed everything over to the police for them to be able to deal with it. Turned out they had been doing this to a lot of people. This is an awesome thread to make people more aware of what is out there.

So for clarification: Are the people sending messages to profiles trying to obtain more personal email addresses, so that they can then send out the scam emails? Or is there other information that they are trying to obtain?

Thanks for the information. I knew about the scam emails, but didn't realize that there is "Phishing" through the profiles......

First of all I wanted to say thank you, X.

I myself have received many of these letters, either in the mail, my email, or in VR. I usually forward them all to Daire to take care of, but it seems that we get more and more every month. I have never responded to them because a friend of mine from another site, actually fell for the fraud, and as it turned out the banker or heiress from Nigeria, turned out to be from Middle Eastern Terrorists, who wound up threatening her and her family until she contacted the FBI. This was about 2 years ago. After she called the FBI, I haven't heard another thing about it, but I remember being terrified for my friend, and swore I would never be swindeled like that.

I urge all of you to pay close attention to was X has to say, because you do not know who exactly is sending you those emails, or what they are or if they are serial killers, terrorists or con artists.

Yes you may all feel free to pass the info along to whom ever you wish :)

I have to be honest, I didn't expect such a large reply to this and it makes me very thankful I posted it. I had no idea the issue was that wide spread a problem on VR.

In general the messages sent on here are just asking for an email address, with the way VR is set up it can be difficult to "crawl/harvest" the site using bots.
I don't know of a case where one of these people have asked for anything other than an email address (on here at least).

But let me stress again, if you get one of these things on VR just forward the message and member name to a Regent with "419 Scam Alert" at the top. Then simply delete the message and block the profile. Please under no circumstance contact them, even for fun. Spam and Viruses can be the least of your problems.

VR is not the only community affected by this type of scam. There is also a newer version of this scam if you use online job finders. Basically "companies" are looking for people to deposit "money orders" for a cut of the amount.

The difference is: The money is real, however if you take the job you are laundering money and are considered guilty for doing so in the US. This means you could face fines and/or jail time with the “drug war” laws. Many of the big drug traffickers are doing this these days, setting up businesses and getting people to do the "dirty" work for them.

Another resource is the FBI web site: www.fbi.gov

Do your homework with any "too good to be true" offers, as each day these scams get more and more complex. But they all have the "too good to be true" feel to them. That is why they work sadly.