Do you want 10 Million Dollars?

Another great spam letter arrived today, this time from the desk of AMUDU IBRAHIM. It says it is private and confidential, so do you think he will sue us for breach of confidentiality ? :-)

FROM THE DESK OF :AMUDU IBRAHIM,
PERSONAL ASSISTANT MANAGER,
BANK OF AFRICA(BOA)
OUAGADOUGOU
BURKINA-FASO,WEST AFRICA.

(PRIVATE AND CONFIDENTIAL)

Dear Friend,

This message might meet you in utmost surprise,However,Its just my urgent need for a foreign partner that made me to contact you for this transaction, I am AMUDU IBRAHIM Personal Assistant Manager of Bank Of Africa(BOA)Ouagadougou Burkina Faso. I want to inquire from you if you can handle this transaction for mutual benefits/life opportunity for you and me. The transaction is about seeking your consent to present you as the next of kin/ beneficiary of the US$10.3 MILLION DOLLARS,(TEN MILLION,THREE HUNDRED THOUSAND UNITED STATES DOLLARS), and who is a customer to the bank where i work.

He was involved in the december 26th 2003 Benin plane crash in West Africa, with his family during their vacation journey . The Fund is currently in a suspense account awaiting claim, the bank made a public notice that they are ready to release this fund to any of his relatives abroad.

THEREFORE, by virtue of its nature as being utterly CONFIDENTIAL, top secret should be maintained please!,because i am still in the active service i do not need any form of implication especially now I'm in the verge of my retirement to endanger my career at last!.

Since we got the information about his death, we have been expecting his next of kin to come over and claim his money because we cannot release it unless somebody applies for it as next of kin or relation to the deceased as indicated in our banking guidelines and laws.

In that regard, i decided to seek your consent for this prospective opportunity. Have it at the back of your mind, that the transaction does not involve any RISK, and does not need much engagement from you, since i am familiar with this kind of transaction being an insider.

Necessary modalities will be worked out to enable us carry out the fund claim under a legitimate arrangement. I have resolved to offer you 30% of the total fund, 10% for sundry expenses that may be incurred during the process of executing this transaction and 60% percent for me.

I will give you more details about the transaction when I receive your affirmative response,more clarification information.Please I would like you to keep this proposal as a top secret and delete it if you are not interested.

I look forward to your earliest response
Regards and thanks,
AMUDU IBRAHIM

NOTE:Your discussion regarding to this transaction should be limited,because am still in Active service. Let honesty and trust be our watchwords throughout this transaction. And your Prompt reply will be highly appreciated.

Spam messages are offering more money

In the beginning I received spam messages promising me 100,000 dollar. But not anymore! Now i'm being promised 18,000,000 dollars! Talk about inflation

FROM THE DESK OF MR.HAMED MAIGA.
BILL AND EXHANGE UNIT BANK OF AFRICA (BOA) OUAGADOUGOU-BURKINA FASO.

URGENT ASSISTANCE IN TRANSACTION

I am the manager of the bill and exchange department of BANK OF AFRICA (BOA) here in Ouagadougou the capital city of Burkina Faso. In my department we discovered an abandoned sum of US$18.2M(EIGHTEEN MILLION TWO HUNDRED THOUSAND US DOLLARS) in an account that belong to one of our foreign customer who died along with his entire family in a plane crashed near Paris (FRANCE) on the 25th of July 2000.

Please visit this site that is one of the evidence the directors brought in other to swallow the money at the end of the day,

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/859479.stm

Since we got information about his death, we have been expecting his next of kin to come over and claim his money because the bank cannot release it unless some body applies for it as next of kin or relation to the deceased as it was indicated in our banking guideline and laws but unfortunately we learnt that all his supposed next of kin or relation died alongside with him at the plane crashed leaving nobody behind for the claim.

It is therefore upon this discovery that I now decided to make this business proposal to you so that you can stand as the beneficiary to the deceased customer and to enable the bank to release the money to you as the next of kin or relation to the deceased customer for safety and subsequent disbursement since nobody is coming for it and we don't want this money to go into the bank treasury as unclaimed bill because the banking law and guideline here stipulates that if such money remained unclaimed after nine years the money will be transferred into the bank treasury as unclaimed fund.

The request of foreigner as next of kin in this business is occasioned by the fact that the customer was a foreigner and a Burkinabe cannot stand as next of kin to a foreigner, and I agree that 45% of this money will be for you as a respect to the provision of a foreign account, 5% will be set aside for expenses incurred during the business and 50% would be for me, thereafter, I will visit Your country for disbursement according to the percentage indicated.

Therefore, to enable the immediate transfer of this fund to your designated bank account, you must apply first to the bank as a relation or next of kin of the deceased with a text of application that I will send to you, so I will like you to send to me your private telephone and fax number for easy and effective communication between each other and also about the location where the money will be remitted.

Upon receipt of your reply, I will send to you by fax or email the text of the application that you will use in claiming the money as the beneficiary to the deceased customer. I will not fail to bring to your notice this transaction is hitch-free and that you should not entertain any atom of fear as all required arrangements have been made for the transfer. Thanks.
You should contact me immediately.

Trusting to hear from you immediately.
Truly Yours,
MR.HAMED MAIGA (BOA)

What is a 419 scam?

419 scams

Advance fee fraud spam such as the Nigerian "419" scam may be sent by a single individual from a cyber cafe in a developing country. Organized "spam gangs" operating from Russia or eastern Europe share many features in common with other forms of organized crime, including turf battles and revenge killings

An advance-fee fraud is a confidence trick in which the target is persuaded to advance sums of money in the hope of realizing a significantly larger gain. Among the variations on this type of scam, are the Nigerian Letter (also called the 419 fraud, Nigerian scam, Nigerian bank scam, or Nigerian money offer), the Spanish Prisoner, the Black money scam as well as Russian/Ukrainian scam (also extremely widespread, though far less popular than the former). Both the so-called Russian and Nigerian scams stand for wholly dissimilar organised crime traditions, they therefore tend to use altogether different breeds of approaches.

The 419 scam originated in the early 1980s as the oil-based Nigerian economy declined. Several unemployed university students first used this scam as a means of manipulating business visitors interested in shady deals in the Nigerian oil sector before targeting businessmen in the west, and later the wider population. Scammers in the early-to-mid 1990s targeted companies, sending scam messages via letter, fax, or Telex. The spread of email and easy access to email-harvesting software significantly lowered the cost of sending scam letters by utilizing the Internet. In the 2000s, the 419 scam has spurred imitations from other locations in Africa, Asia and Eastern Europe, and, more recently, from North America, Western Europe (mainly UK), and Australia.

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. The American Dialect Society has traced the term "419 fraud" back to 1992.

The advance-fee fraud is similar to a much older scam known as the Spanish Prisoner scam in which the trickster would tell the scam victim that a (fictitious) rich prisoner had promised to share (non-existent) treasure with the victim if the latter would send money to bribe the prison guards.

Source: Wikipedia