Nigerian Scam
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Saturday, October 17th, 2009 (No comments yet) |
At it's simplest, a Nigerian scam is a con where someone sends you an e-mail pretending to represent the account of a rich relative you didn't know you had who left you a fortune, the king of some country who for some reason wants YOUR help hiding all his gold, or a hundred other variations where people prey upon your greed to rob you.
As an example, here's what a scam looks like in the wild:
Ooh! I won a lottery that I didn't even enter! It's too good to be true.
When you open the e-mail, the letter is worded like many award letters would be. It's in English and it's formatted nicely and no one would actually lie to me so it MUST be real, right?
Oh boy! I'm rich. This suspicious e-mail says so!
Don't Become a News Story
click the image to read her sad tale
There's a lady in Oregon who lost over $400,000 to a Nigerian scam before she finally realized that she wasn't going to get any of the money that the con artist kept promising her. The simple rule here is to remember that you didn't win any money, you don't have long lost rich relatives who are going to leave their estate to you. Even if they did, you should become very suspicious the first time anyone asked YOU for any money particularly when you have to send it out of country to someone you've never seen, never met, and probably never even talked to on the phone.
