How to get rich quick....or not! Scams and more...: Business Proposal

Tuesday, May 5, 2009

Business Proposal

From: Michel Toure [mailto:toure_mic1@msn.com]
Sent: 02 May 2009 12:17
Subject: Business Proposal

Greetings,

Thanks for your urgent response to my short message. Please allow me to intimate you with a business transaction that would benefit both of us. My name is Michel Toure, I am the director of the project and engineering division of SODECI (Société de distribution d'eau de Côte d'Ivoire). I will want you to assist me in the claim and transfer of Seven Million Euros.

This amount was realized from over-invoiced contract amount awarded by us in 2007 to expatriate companies. The Contract's Amount was deliberately overestimated to read more than the actual cost of the project thus leaving a surplus of Seven Million Euros. However, as a staff of SODECI I cannot claim this money without a foreign partner who will act as the contract beneficiary and as such, entitled to receive the funds as payment. This is why I am contacting you to allow this money to be transferred into your account and to be my custodian for the money.

If you are interested please get back to me so I can give you further details about this transaction. I am willing to give you 25% of the total amount after the transfer, the rest will be held and released to me when I get to your country. I look forward to hear from you.

Regards,

Michel.

No comments:

Post a Comment

What is advance-fee fraud?

According to Wikipedia 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.

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Advance-fee fraud
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 made the cost of sending scam letters through the Internet low. 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.
Insa Nolte, a lecturer of University of Birmingham's African Studies Department, stated that "The availability of e-mail helped to transform a local form of fraud into one of Nigeria's most important export industries."