14 DAY TRIAL // Email con artists still hope to profit from the naivety of some people, promising millions to those willing to help them. The only difference now is that the newer versions of the Nigerian scam are a bit better documented. Yesterday I received an email from what seemed to be the exchange manager of a Burkina Faso bank. He revealed that he is willing to share $18 million (€12 million) with me in exchange for my assisting him in making a transaction.
Most people know by now that these sorts of schemes are old news, but I decided to answer back just to see where it leads next. I was curios on what I had to do to get the easy money.
The interesting thing about this version of the scam is that the email contained a link that led to an article from The Telegraph, from 2005, which announced the death of a tycoon along with his entire family.
The millions seem to have belonged to him and now they're apparently forgotten in one of the bank's accounts.
“40% of this money will be for you in respect of the provision of a foreign account, 10% for your expenses incurred and 50% for me. Thereafter, I will visit your country for disbursement according to the percentage indicated,” the message read.
Because I would happily settle for a mere 40% of the $18 million (€12 million), I wrote Mr Ali Buba back, claiming I was happy to do business with him.
Today I received a reply from the 42-year-old man who is married with three children, saying “You have my personal guarantee and Assurance that this transaction is 100% legitimate and Risk free and it would be handled under the confines of the law. I shall also require your personal Guarantee that you are someone that I can trust and confide in because I will reciprocate same to you.”
He gave me his personal phone number and his work ID which should help convince me that everything is legit, eve though “the Executive Governor of the Bank of Africa does not know of my involvement in this deal.”
We all know where this is going to lead next, so there's no point in doing anything further. I just wanted to write about it to alert people that even though the name of the country has been changed and everything seems to be more realistic, in fact it's not.
A simple search revealed that a lot of these emails have been received, so if all of us accepted the offer, will we have to split the millions?
Another interesting fact is that the ID card I received, even though it has the bank's genuine logo, the motto written beside it doesn't seem to belong to the bank, or any other organization for that matter.
Also, Ali Buba has been sending these offers from a lot of different email addresses, a thing that should raise the suspicion of those that might still think they've hit gold.