Unusual email scam?

[Põdi]

Got this in my Inbox today, anybody else seen or received it?

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

MR. GEORGE EDIALE

FEDERAL MINISTRY OF PETROLEUM RESOURCES

FEDERAL SECRETARIAT IKOYI, LAGOS-NIGERIA.

EMAIL: [email protected]

DATE: JUNE 05, 2002

Attn: Patrick Gregory (

Dear Sir,

RE: URGENT AND CONFIDENTIAL BUSINESS PROPOSAL

I am Mr. George Ediale, the Director and Funds Co-ordinator of the Finance/Contract Department of the

FEDERAL MINISTRY OF PETROLEUM RESOURCES.

Terms of Reference.

My term of reference involves the financial management and disbursement of proceeds from petroleum products and also the award of contracts to multinational companies.

My office is also saddled with responsibility of screening categorization and prioritization of projects embarked upon by this Ministry as well as feasibility study for selected projects and supervising the project consultants involved. A breakdown of the fiscal expenditure by this office as at the end of the fourth fiscal quarter of 2000 indicates that this Ministry paid out a whooping sum of US$736M ( Seven hundred and Thirty Six Million United States Dollars) to successful contract beneficiaries. The Ministry is now compiling beneficiaries to be paid this second quarter of 2001.

The crux of this letter is that the finance/contract department of this Ministry deliberately over-inflated the contract value of the various contracts awarded. In the cause of disbursements, this department has been able to track down the sum of US$41.5M (Forty One Million Five Hundred Thousand United States Dollars) as the over-invoiced sum. This money is now lying and floating in the Ministry's domiciliary account with the Apex Bank, Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN). My colleagues and I now want to quickly transfer this funds to a safe nominated account for possible investment abroad. We are not allowed as a matter of Government policy to operate any foreign account because of our status as Civil/public servants. Hence the need to solicit for your account to transfer this fund into.

We have also evolved a sharing formula as follows:

(1) 25% for the foreign account owner

(2) 70% for I and my colleagues

(3) 5% will be set aside to defray all expenses both locally and internationally during the course of this transaction.

Furthermore, we shall be relying on your advice as regards investments of part of our share in any blue-chip Company in your country. Be informed that this business is genuinely and 100% safe considering the high-powered government official involved. Send your private fax, telephone numbers and your mobile telephone if any and same of your Bank and Account number. This is to facilitate easy communication with you. Contact me strictly by email.

Looking forward to healthy business relationship with you.

Sincerely,

MR. GEORGE EDIALE

NOTE: PLEASE ACKNOWLEDGE THE RECEIPT OF THIS MESSAGE, THANK YOU.

[Epsilon 5]

Yeah right, a government official will have a lycos email adress...

[peterkist]

I get about 4 or 5 per month. Each time it's a new name (cut and paste comes to mind).

Most are from Nigeria as well.

Only one way to deal with those...

[Kartoffel]

Heck, 99% of my email (hotmail) is junk, i just delete it w/o reading more then the sender and subject if it's junk.

Why bother reading junk like that?

[weegee_101]

Sounds like a big time illegal scam crap. Call your local FBI office and ask them if they want a copy of it. Never know, it may become useful in a current or future investigation.

[Charles Lindsey]

Is this not the same scam Derek posted a while back where the guy emailed them back with all sorts of questions?

Seems like it. Dunno.

[Põdi]

Did a bit of investigating, there's a whole slew of them and you can read them here some are really quite funny. Yeah I remember the thing SC posted. Similar, but now they seem to be going the 'official' line.

[Guest Remo Williams]

Hehe! The old Nigerian scam is one of the oldest ones in the book. They use to run it by snail mail before the net and email became really popular.

[Guest Grayfox]

my email inbox gets so full of spam, i think itll create a singularity...

if we all get sucked into some digital event horizon, you can blame me for not cleaning out my inbox in a timely manner

[GREG MILLER]

I always get junk in my Yahoo account, and occasionally in my main account. I too just delete if the subject reads spam. I was trying to get a legit copy of Win2k Pro off of ebay and this came across my email box:

quote:

---

I've noticed that you bid on microsoft windows 2000

professional. I was wondering if you would like to

purchase a back-up copy of the program for $30 on a

cdr. The cdr contains full version of windows 2000

professional, it has been tested and works perfectly,

and also comes with a functional cd key. You can

install this program on as many computers as you

want. Free shipping in the usa. If you are interested

let me know.

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

This email was sent by an eBay member via eBay's email forwarding system.

If you reply to the email, your response will go directly to the member and

not through eBay.

---

I turned this one into ebay. Man the nerve to even use Ebay's own email system for this crap.

[Kartoffel]

That guy was either:

a: stupid

b: an idiot

c: someone who has no idea what copyright laws are

d: ...

Cant think of any more, but what an idiot.

[Guest Grayfox]

ahhh yes i wanna revive this old dinosaur. got this email today:

quote:

---

Tenders Committee South Africa

Department of Minerals & Energy

Pretoria South Africa

DIRECT PHONE: +871-763591470

DIRECT FAX: +871-763591471

CORPORATE TELEPHONE: +27-736627479

CORPORATE FAX: +27-115076482

STRICTLY CONFIDENTIAL AND URGENT

I Am DR.GEORGE THEMBA,A native of Cape Town in South Africa and I am

an Executive Director with a South African Government ministry. I am

also the Secretary of the Tenders Committee set up by the government

to look into contracts under the Department of Minerals and Energy.

We got your contact from a close source and I was mandated to seek

your Confidential co-operation in the execution of the project I am

about to describe. First, I must let you know the major reason for

this project. This project will be of great benefit to all parties

involved and hope you will keep it as a top secret because of the

nature of this transaction.

Within the Department of Minerals and Energy, we (me and four of my

colleagues) discovered and we have in our possession as overdue

payment totaling Fourteen million, five hundred thousand US dollars

(US$14.5M) which we want to transfer abroad with the assistance and

cooperation of a foreign company/individual to receive the said fund.

More so, we are handicapped in the circumstances, as the South Africa

Civil Service Code of Conduct does not allow us to operate offshore

accounts hence your relevance in the whole transaction. Also we cannot

access The funds, because indigenous companies cannot carry out

contracts of this magnitude.

This amount US$14.5M represents the balance of the total contract

value executed on behalf of this Department by a foreign contracting

firm, which was over-invoiced deliberately. Though the actual contract

cost have been paid to the original contractor, leaving the balance in

the tune of the said amount which we have in principle gotten approval

to remit by key-tested telegraphic transfer (K.T.T.) to any foreign

bank account you will provide by filing an application through the

Justice Ministry here in South Africa for the transfer of rights and

privileges of the former contractor to you.

I have the authority of my partners to propose the following: SHOULD

YOU BE WILLING to assist us in this transaction, your share of the sum

will be 25% of the total sum, 65% for us and 10% for reimbursable

expenses (taxation and miscellaneous Expenses incurred.) This is after

all expenses have been refunded and taxes have been paid. The

transaction itself is 100%-SAFE for all involved.

This is possible if on your part you treat it as confidential and with

the utmost secrecy it deserves. Please note that your area of

specialization is not a hindrance to the successful execution of this

transaction. Hope that you will not disappoint us. I want to assure

you that my partners and I are in a position to make the payment of

this claim possible provided you can give us a very strong assurance

and guarantee that the funds will be secure.

Please remember to treat this matter as very confidential, because we

will not comprehend with any form of exposure as we are still in

active government service and will want to retire honorably.

DO FURNISH ME WITH YOUR CONTACT PHONE/FAX NUMBERS SO THAT WE CAN

PROGRESS FURTHER.

I wait in anticipation of your cooperation.

Yours faithfully,

DR.GEORGE THEMBA

---

ok i really want to screw with these idiots before i turn them in to the FBI... any suggestion? lol anyone know a govt bank acct number? that would be priceless... ooooh or maybe an unlisted number to an FBI branch somewhere?

[LostInSpace]

Some greedly little suckes must be falling for that if it's still around. I recieved this same letter during the past summer via fax at the office I work in. In fact, the office recieved 3 faxes, over time, the one above and two others that were different but similar.

[Wolferz]

Looks like the same old Juwannalottamoney Phishing scam.

I know of one guy who says he turned the scam around on them. He stated that he had suckered the scammers into sending him some cash.

Toss it in the round file or the recycle bin with the rest of the rubbish

[Wolferz]

"Stupid is as stupid does my momma always said."

> Forrest Gump

"There's a sucker born every minute"

> P. T. Barnum

"If it looks too good to be true,

It isn't"

> Murphy's laws

One would think that Interpol would be working to shut these scammers down.

Let's get a mercenary force together and fly over there and greet "them" at the airport

[Guest Grayfox]

quote:

---

These are old classic scams.

---

really?

lol maybe ill send him a bunch of fake numbers... hmmm or maybe the numbers to my ex wifes bank account! woohooo

[Guest Grayfox]

ummm ok.

[Guest DocHoliday]

Yup, I got a snail mail "from Nigeria" years ago. It was actually on this nice heavy textured paper with an actual logo on it. Pretty convincing.

I heard that recently "the wife" of late Arafat is sending out similar "requests" for help transferring funds out of Palestine.

It never ends

[trenth00]

Hey Greyfox, here's an idea:

Get chumy with a high level person in a bank. Then make up a special nonfunctional account number he or someone at the bank would recognize. Give this number to one of these scam spammers. When the shaisters (sp?) run the account maybe he/she could get their account number. And now the beauty part comes in. Take their account number and respond to another scam spammer ad: it's great! Like feeding a dog to a dog!

[LostInSpace]

Got this one in the fax at work the other day. Notice there's nothing on the top of this page as to who sent it. They are getting good but you can still tell it's a scam.

Scam Letter

[Guest Grayfox]

omg blatant scammage... some of this is actually comedic... only bad thing is the ******* has the gall to use a tragedy such as that bombing to try something like this...

you should reply with the name heywood jablowmi