Trehb101.com - Got Geek? » Russian scam http://www.trehb101.com Information Security : Technology : Project Management : Life Thu, 31 Mar 2011 22:23:44 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.6 en hourly 1 Do People Still Fall For This? http://www.trehb101.com/index.php/2009/12/30/do-people-still-fall-for-this/ http://www.trehb101.com/index.php/2009/12/30/do-people-still-fall-for-this/#comments Wed, 30 Dec 2009 18:20:18 +0000 TheDon http://www.trehb101.com/?p=271 I still regularly get communication like the one below from wives of presidents, sons of billionaires, daughters of a wealthy sheik, etc. and saying that with my help I can be an instant millionaire. The words in the message slightly vary, but the message is pretty much the same. This scam, commonly known as the “Nigerian Sam”, has been going on even before e-mail became widely widespread, but after all these years and after all the media exposure it has received, one would think folks would no longer fall for it and perhaps the scammers will change their tactics.

Well as illustrated in the e-mail below, and from the tons of similar e-mails I have received, it doesn’t look like the tactic have changed at all. I wonder if people still fall for them, since nothing changed on the bad guys side.

My Dear.
Greetings to you, I am Mrs. Katherine Janssen from Holland, married to Dr.Franklin Janssen,owner, engineering servicing firm attached to a Saudi Arabian oil company in Asia.

We were married but without Children and after his demise during the tsunami disaster, I fell ill and the doctor diagnosed that I have a lung cancer and have only but a few months to live.

I am contacting you in view of the fact that we could be of great assistance to each other, likewise developing a cordial business relationship towards helping the less privileged children on the street as been the wishes of my late husband since we never had children of our own.

We had a deposit of Twenty Five Million USD to establish a charity foundation in my name in order to keep memories alive. I need someone that is trustworthy that can help in establishing our dreams.

If you are capable and trustworthy to execute this noble task, please respond and I will give you the necessary details on how to get this funds.

God Bless you,
Mrs. Katherine Janssen.

Just an added FYI, the Nigerian Scam is one of the tactics used by scammers to con unwitting victims of their hard-earned money. These tactics are typically called “Advance-fee fraud”. An 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). The so-called Russian and Nigerian scams stand for wholly dissimilar organised-crime traditions; they therefore tend to use altogether different breeds of approaches. (Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advance-fee_fraud)

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