How to get rich quick....or not! Scams and more...: ivory coast

Tuesday, September 8, 2009

Oh dearest me... Decisions, decisions...

From: Charles Larissa [mailto:charles.larissa@huramis.biz]
Sent: 08 September 2009 17:49
To: undisclosed recipients:
Subject: HELLO

Dearest,

How are you?

Greetings in the name of God. We are Charles and Larissa from Sierra Leone .

We are writing you from Rep of Cote d'Ivoire where we have been taking refuge after the brutal war and Murder of our parents by the rebels during the renewed Fighting in our
country Sierra Leone .

Because of the war our late Father sold his shipping company and took us to a nearby country Cote d'Ivoire where he deposited US$18, 300,000.00 Million(Eighteen Million Three Hundred Thousand United States Dollars) in his foreign account with one of the bank here in Cote 'Ivoire.

Please, We have prayed before contacting you with the trust in God that you will be of help to me and my Sister who is seriously sick now coupled with the current political situation in Ivory Coast now, We are seeking for your assistance to transfer this Money to your account for a good investment Project in your country an d also relocate to your country with my younger sister Larissa to further our study.

We are willing to offer you 15% of the total sum for Your assistance.
Please for your good information this transaction Is 100% risk free and in no way connected with any illegality. Transaction, Please Help us to get out of this terrible situation and our Almighty God will bless you.

Please, Kindly call us on this Number +22508443072.or email for more discussion.
Best Regards,
Charles & Larissa

Saturday, August 29, 2009

Living next door to Alice

From: Alice [mailto:alice_masn1@yahoo.com]
Sent: 28 August 2009 22:10
To: alice_masn1@yahoo.com
Subject: HELLO,FORM Mrs.Alice Mason..

Remain Bless in the name of the Lord.
I am Mrs.Alice Mason from latvia. I am married to
Deacon David.C.Mason who served as an Archdeacon in the paroisse saint sebastien Church.here in ivory coast for twelve years
before he died in 2004. We have been doing our best to promote charity work
anywhere the Lord laid us to. According to KJV(Acts 20:35 ,1Corinthians 13:2).
Since His death in 2004 I have been having Lung Cancer and now my doctor has confirm to me that i would not last for the next 16 Weeks due to the cancer illness.
I have been distributing all i have since the Doctor gave me the notification,so
I am contacting you because I need a trustworthy someone whom I will give my life time savings to help me establish a charity program,I got your contact and prayed over it and I developed confidence and decided to trust you and contact you for this donation.

I what you to help me to use this money,thats the sum of 4.5Million U.S. Dollars which my late husband deposited here in one of the bank for chirty work,because i have decided to donate this fund to any individual that will use it for churches and orphanage. so As soon as I receive your reply I will give you the contact of the bank here in ivory coast.I will also issue you a letter of authority that will empower you as the original- beneficiary of the money.Please always be prayerful
all through your life.and Please assure me that you will do accordingly as I stated herein. Hoping to hearing from you. Remain blessed in the name of the Lord.Yours in
Christ.
Mrs.Alice Mason.

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."