Nigeria Letters...

Who believes (e)mails like this...?!?

(The old, well-known, Nigeria mails are know available on the Net.)

For most recipients of e-mail, the Nigerian spam scam is a familiar sight. It comes, often quite regularly, from an alleged former dignitary of the Nigerian government. The typical storyline is that the sender has stashed away a huge wad of cash, but needs a foreign bank account through which to funnel it.

If the recipient of the letter would kindly provide their own account number, they can be assured a huge reward.

The scam -- which usually results in some sucker getting their bank account cleaned out -- has been around since before the dawn of the Internet.

But if recent tallies of spam complaints are any indication, perpetrators of the well-known fraud are changing their tactics. Fraud experts say the scam is too famous to work in its original form.

"As we've pushed awareness, they come up with new ways to attract victims," said John Kane, research manager at the National White Collar Crime Center.

In the past few months, Kane has seen versions of the Nigerian scam that feature authors ranging from deposed African leaders to Afghan refugees to an alleged U.S. commando.

Perhaps the most common variant on the Nigerian scam is a look-a-like letter purporting to be from a deposed leader of another African nation.

NOTE! This is provided as a warning example of scams more and more frequently occuring out there.

Request for Assistance.

I am Dr. Amos Babalola (MNIM), the co-ordinator of the Federal 
Government of Nigeria contract review panel of the National 
Gas Company (NGC).

Sometime ago, a contract was awarded to a conglomerate of foreign 
companies by my committee on behalf of the NGC, the contract was 
over-invoiced to the tune of US$24.5 million. This was done 
deliberately. The over-invoicing was a deal by members of my 
committee to benfit from the project. 
We now desire to transfer this money which is presently in a 
suspense account of the NGC in the Debt Reconciliation Committee 
(DRC) into an account which we expect you to kindly provide for us,
this we believe will not be so much of a burden to you.

Benefits:
For providing the account where we shall remit the money, you will 
be entitled to 25% of the money, 70% will be for me and my partners 
while 5% has been mapped out from the total sum to cover any expenses 
that may be incurred by us during the course of this transaction, 
both local and international expenses, these also include taxes that 
may arise.

I would require:
A. Name and address of company/beneficiary
B. Your bank account number, bank address and other information 
   relevant to the project at hand.
C. It is not necessary that the account you are providing should 
   have money in it, what matters is that it should had been in 
   existence for a while (accounts dynamics) and you should have 
   a 100% control over it.

The above information would be used to make formal applications 
as a matter of procedure for the release of the money for onward 
transfer to your account. It does not matter whether or not your
company or you performed contract projects of the nature described 
here, the assumption is that you won a major contract and sub-
contracted it out to other companies. More ofter than not, big
trading companies or individuals of unrelated field win major 
contrats and sub-contracts it out to more specialised firms for 
execution of such contracts. We have strong and reliable connections
and contacts at the Debt Reconciliation Committee (DRC) and the 
Federal Ministry of Finance (FMF) and we have no doubts that all 
this money will be released and transferred if we get the necessary
foreign partner in this transaction. Therefore, when the business is
successfully concluded, we shall through our same connections 
withdraw all documents used from all the concerned government
ministries for 100% security.

We want this money to be transferred to the overseas account which 
you are going to kindly provide for safe keeping pending when we 
will determine how we want our portion of the money, all expenses
regarding the account opening if not already in existence shall be
borne by you, all monies spent from personal purse during the course 
of this transaction are however reimburseable as already stated from 
the 5% that had been set aside for this purpose after the transfer of 
the funds have been effected into your account that you will be 
providing for the purpose of this business.

Please, contact me immediately through fax (234 1 7590371) or e-mail 
to ascertain your interest in doing us this favour, so that if you 
are not, it will enable me scout for another foreign partner
to carry out this transaction. Fortunately, if you are interested 
in assisting me, please send the reqyuired information mentioned 
through my direct fax number: (234 1 7590371) or email at any time
of the day. For more details on this transaction, send me a fax or 
email me.

If you will be of assistance, I will surely appreciate and thank 
you for your kindness in giving me this assistance.

Yours sincerely,

Dr. Amos Babalola (MNIM).