Bombarded with Nigerian e-mail scam.

[Smokey]

For last couple of weeks, my main email address have been bombarded with emails claiming to have money waiting for me. And the theme is always the same.....”I have millions of dollars in an account somewhere and need your name and account number to get it out”.

Here one just received today:

--------------------------------------

HELLO

I'm Jide Ogundare, a representative of Prudential Insurance Company. I have a sensitive and private brief from the Senior Executives of this top company in need of your partnership to re-profile funds amounting to US$45M ( Forty - Five Million United States Dollars). I will let you have the details, but in summary, the fund would be paid to you through a Finance Company where it is presently deposited as soon as the filing and documentation process is concluded in your name.

This is a legitimate transaction without government interference and After successful conclusion of this transaction, we shall share the money 50-50(50% for you and 50%for me). I await your good response today. Thanks and remain blessed. I require you to maintain the confidentiality of this transaction because it is important due to the fact that I am still in active services to the PRUDENTIAL INSURANCE COMPANY.

Your earliest response to this matter is very important.
Please I need the following:
1. YOUR FULL NAME
2. PHONE AND FAX NUMBER
3. HOME ADDRESS / COMPANY'S NAME AND ADDRESS.
4. BANK ACCOUNT (WHERE YOU WILL WANT THE MONEY TO
BE TRANSFERRED INTO)
5. YOUR AGE AND SEX.

Yours truly,

MR. JIDE OGUNDARE.

-----------------------------

I'm thinking to my self that who would be dumb enough to fall for such a scam.

[Feanor]

For last couple of weeks, my main email address have been bombarded with emails claiming to have money waiting for me. And the theme is always the same.....”I have millions of dollars in an account somewhere and need your name and account number to get it out”.
...
I'm thinking to my self that who would be dumb enough to fall for such a scam.

Indeed.

I got letters from Nigeria decades ago before anybody had conceived of email. From the first I intuitively knew that it was a scam. (First clue: the guy was a crook in his own country; why wouldn't he be a crook in mine? Second clue: why me? Third clue: anything too to be true ...)

Come to emails, I got my first "phishing" email 7 or 8 years ago before I'd even heard term. It was apparently from PayPal: the logo looked perfect and there were no grammatical errors but they wanted my ID and password to "confirm my account status" or some such phraseology. Didn't look right to me. First clue: they knew my Id and password, why ask me?

[Groundbeef]

As an alternate personality, I bait those scum bastards. If you would like to have some fun reading, go here:

www.419eater.com

Check it out. A site dedicated to ruining the scammers days.

[Mr Peabody]

This type of email is a real plague. I just reposted a couple things on Craigslist and got excited to see a couple replies only to be deflated by finding out they were scammers. They were the one where they will send you a check and their shipper will pick the item up. Usually, and they probably were waiting to get around to it, they will want to send you a check for more than what your item costs and you send them the difference and those who fall for it get left with a check that is no good while you sent them money. I did a transaction with a guy in Canada and it took about 3 weeks for his check to clear. Unfortunately by that time he backed out of the deal. I didn't lose anything so I guess it was a cheap lesson. First time I've gotten this kind of crap from a Craigslist listing though. The obvious thing about these is what isn't said, they ask nothing of substance about the item sold and will not directly answer questions posed to them. I was quite surprised in this day of electronics that a check from out of the country will take such a long time to clear.

The Nigerian emails are so funny though. I didn't know I had so many lost relatives and friends in such high governmental offices. I rarely get spam in my email but I made the mistake of trying to sign up for a newsletter and started getting these. I just blocked all the email addresses as they came in and it eventually stopped. GB, I'll have to check that website. Sometimes those caught me in the wrong mood and I'd fire something back to them. But then I thought answering these is just giving them my address again and most of the emails come from temp or invalid originators any way.

[Groundbeef]

This type of email is a real plague. I just reposted a couple things on Craigslist and got excited to see a couple replies only to be deflated by finding out they were scammers. They were the one where they will send you a check and their shipper will pick the item up. Usually, and they probably were waiting to get around to it, they will want to send you a check for more than what your item costs and you send them the difference and those who fall for it get left with a check that is no good while you sent them money. I did a transaction with a guy in Canada and it took about 3 weeks for his check to clear. Unfortunately by that time he backed out of the deal. I didn't lose anything so I guess it was a cheap lesson. First time I've gotten this kind of crap from a Craigslist listing though. The obvious thing about these is what isn't said, they ask nothing of substance about the item sold and will not directly answer questions posed to them. I was quite surprised in this day of electronics that a check from out of the country will take such a long time to clear.

The Nigerian emails are so funny though. I didn't know I had so many lost relatives and friends in such high governmental offices. I rarely get spam in my email but I made the mistake of trying to sign up for a newsletter and started getting these. I just blocked all the email addresses as they came in and it eventually stopped. GB, I'll have to check that website. Sometimes those caught me in the wrong mood and I'd fire something back to them. But then I thought answering these is just giving them my address again and most of the emails come from temp or invalid originators any way.

The main thing to do if you are going to engage in "baiting" is to do it safetly. Get a GMail address, that has nothing to do with your RL name, or any other ID. Then respond with that email.

[GMichael]

I used to get those e-mails all the time. My favorite part was that it would start off with, "Dear sir or madam," Then the next line would read, "We have done much research and have found that you are an honorable person." Excuse me? If you did so much research, why don't you know if I'm a sir or a madam?

[Worf101]

I used to get them a lot more but my email spam filters pretty good at snaggin' most of em. Besides the ones from Africa, I've gotten them from England (lots of sweepstakes I never knew I entered), the former Soviet Union, China... you name it. When one manages to sneek past the filters I sometimes send a response like the following:

"You ignorant sunsa*****es, how stupid do you think I am. Your scam is so last century, why would anyone be stupid enough after all these years and expose's to give you the time of day? Sure, I'll give you access to my bank account and all my savings in hopes that you'll give me millions of dollars stolen from your impoverished country. Yeah right, bugger off you ignorant f**ks and get a real job!"

Or something to that affect.

Da Worfster

[bobsticks]

Been there, opened that...do not, under any circumstance, open any adjoining links in those types of e-mails. Invariably them bad boys are full of phishing viruses and trojan clickers...

...if they'd have done their research they'd a known I'm barely approaching the "honor roll"