Nigerian Money Scam

I had never heard of this before, until a friend of mine was selling her furniture online. She posted it everywhere and set up an email address to sell her furniture and was excited when she got a note offering the asking price for her sofa set. The email read like this:

Message By smith: hi, seller i saw ur ad for the sofa,my charity org seach and buy used items for less poeple such as victims of war ,my org is inrested in buying this sofa set for $600 only ,pls reply asap.

Contact details of smith

Email :	simpsongeorge001@yahoo.com
Phone:	2348029683954

Immediately I was uncomfortable with this because of a few things:

1. He never mentions the organization he works for
2. The spelling is horrific
3. The name and email address don't match. This would be ok if the email was a recognized/famoud name, but the email address isn't something like xenawarriorprincess@blah.com.

She emailed him, and not recognizing the phone number, wisely asked him to call her.

Smith got back to her and she received this:

michael james simpsongeorge001@yahoo.com wrote:

hi, am most happy to see u mail me back for response for ur ad ,i would have coll u but am very busy right now ,and perhaps my phone network is engaged ,but not withstanding i will not hesitate to coll u ,pls could u mail me the ad price for those items ,and asap that u would want me to effect the payment ,cos right now i can afford to pay with my check asap , let me know if u are ok by this .pls let me have ur feedback latest by today or tommorow pls,cos now am mobile or better still u can try and call me today,on 2348029683954,THANKS for ur co-operation.SMITH

Notice how now we have 3 names, the name on the email address (Michael James), the name in the email address (simpson, george) and the name in the email (Smith).

She replied back, asking a few questions not the least of which being how to dial that number from Canada.

michael james simpsongeorge001@yahoo.com wrote:

HI, pls sorry for the inconviniences it was due to my job ,i do switch off my phone ,whenever am in the security radio active area,pls as i have told u i can afford to pay by check ,a well certified check,since u have agree to accept check ,i will need to contact my shipper to start making neccessary arrrangement .pls u have to mail me ur personal data ;address ,city ,name in full, and i promise to incure the shipping cost ,added to the ad price ,that is when i have meet my shipper to know the cost of shipping this items to the u.k ,pls i suggest u coll me now, or umail me as soon as u get this , mail or u pls call me , cos of u i will switch on my phone.thanks CLEMENT

Okay, now we have four names, who is CLEMENT?

She asked me so I looked the number up on an area code decoder that fishy feeling I had, grew. The number according to the site was from Nigeria.

Again, I'd never heard of this, but I googled "michael james fraud" and one of the first results was Nigerian Advance Fee Fraud! Coincidence - I think not!

It's a version of what's called a 419 scam. It's called 419 due to the section of the Nigerian penal code regarding fraud. Basically they do a variation of this:

Find someone online who's selling an item, anything, a house, a car, something on ebay, furniture whatever, and agree to buy it. They tell the person they are not in the country and would like to have the item shipped. They always pay with some physical instrument, never cash, usually a cheque or money order of some kind. When the payment arrives, it is for more than the amount owed, with instructions to send the remainder via wire/Western Union to the buyer as a favour.

This is where my knowlege of banking helps! Sometimes it takes a few days for a fraudulent item to come back to the bank where it was deposited. Which means that even if your bank says the cheque or whatever is ok, and it looks ok, it could still come back in a week, or a month from the bank it's issued one to your bank as fraudulent. The way the scam works is that by the time you wire the money away (which you can't get back once it's sent), the cheque won't have been returned. When it does come back fraudulent, you're stuck covering for the whole amount of the cheque, including what you sent away. People lose thousands this way!

There are many variations. Sometimes, they claim to be government contractors looking for bids on a job (this is more for businesses) and ask the bidders to pay advanced fees for the bidding/registration, sometimes they claim to be charitable organizations collecting furniture for schools/hospitals. Always they are from Nigeria. I told my girlfriend all this and we decided it was best just not to get back to the latest email and forget the whole thing.

Today she received this in her inbox, not to my surprise.

hi, i hav not heared from why ,pls am supose to have koll u but am in a business summit in the u.k ,of the commonwealth ,cos am not in the state rigth now ,pls i want u to do me a favour and help this is very urgent,my wife called me this morning that she is in a deep shit and got stranded in west africa ,nigeria to be precise ,where she went for her archeaologist tourist excursion trip, unfortunatly for her the course has just been extendend till 20th of dis month ,and she had accumulated hip of bills to pay the hotel lodged and she can,t make use of her amex platinum card over there cos its is a remote area ,and she hav to pay up her bills up till 20th of july at the experatin of her course ,and also to extend the date of her return ticket to the state ,she has exhusted all her money ,as i hav told u that am in a summit inthe u.k where she called me .pls u are the closeset person that can help me of this situaton pls, all i need of u is to kindly spare me a sum of $300, to settle her bills and also do other neccessary things ,i shall honourably refund this money back to u ,if possible with an intrest ,if u demand ,i will add it up to the bargain price of the items ,which my shipper will deliver the check to u by hand by this u hav full course to smile to the bank .N.B pls if u are sending this amount to her ,pls use western money transfer , so that she can get it easily ,her data is;PITT SMITH ,pls try to coll me on my mobile phone if u will do this favour for me on +2348029683954, THANKS for ur co operattion.SMITH.

So we were right all along, and thankfully listened to our guts! My point, don't let this happen to you. If you ever are selling something online, please don't ever, ever send money in a way that you where not sure if you'll receive the item, use escrow where possible. And never send money by wire to Nigeria!

Lastly, if your gut tells you something is not right. Go with your gut, you may not always be right, but you'll always be glad you did.