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You're rich! Are there gullible people out there?
Toby LaRhone
Posts: 12,916 Forum Member
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A day or so ago, on another thread I jokingly referred to the letter from Nigeria informing me that I was to inherit a fortune if I simply forward some personal details to the sender.
I've had similar from China. In both I am the last remaining relative of a businessman and the sender wants a fee. Both are littered with typos and poor grammar.
Coincidentally, yesterday I received an email (text below). My spam filter threw it straight into Junk as "suspicious".
Are there really people out there gullible enough to respond?
Please let no-one say they already have!
"Hello,
I am Simon Stewart, an army contractor attached to the army force in Afghanistan. On the 27th of February 2014, I and my late friend discovered metal boxes containing US Dollars, which is a total figure, mark $10.2 Million. We believe the boxes are owned and linked to rebels in Afghanistan.
With the help of late lieutenant (name withheld), $8.2 Million was successfully deposited in a safe security company out from Afghanistan for security reason. But sadly my friend died on a mission. He is inside a U.S. military MC-12 plane which crashed in eastern Afghanistan early Friday morning 7th March 2014, killing three Americans.
I am now in desperate need of a reliable and trustworthy person whom will receive and secure the US Dollars for safe keeping, until my duty elapses here. I can't afford to leave the money in the security company since I don’t know much about the country Ghana and Afghanistan is getting unsafe and dangerous every day. I have no idea what could happen next as everything remains inconclusive at this point.
As soon as I receive your response and contact details with your ID, I will forward you my Identity, for you to know who you are dealing with. You will be compensated with 40% of this fund, please assure me of your keeping this topmost secret so that my job would not be jeopardized.
My Regards,
Simon Stewart"
I've had similar from China. In both I am the last remaining relative of a businessman and the sender wants a fee. Both are littered with typos and poor grammar.
Coincidentally, yesterday I received an email (text below). My spam filter threw it straight into Junk as "suspicious".
Are there really people out there gullible enough to respond?
Please let no-one say they already have!
"Hello,
I am Simon Stewart, an army contractor attached to the army force in Afghanistan. On the 27th of February 2014, I and my late friend discovered metal boxes containing US Dollars, which is a total figure, mark $10.2 Million. We believe the boxes are owned and linked to rebels in Afghanistan.
With the help of late lieutenant (name withheld), $8.2 Million was successfully deposited in a safe security company out from Afghanistan for security reason. But sadly my friend died on a mission. He is inside a U.S. military MC-12 plane which crashed in eastern Afghanistan early Friday morning 7th March 2014, killing three Americans.
I am now in desperate need of a reliable and trustworthy person whom will receive and secure the US Dollars for safe keeping, until my duty elapses here. I can't afford to leave the money in the security company since I don’t know much about the country Ghana and Afghanistan is getting unsafe and dangerous every day. I have no idea what could happen next as everything remains inconclusive at this point.
As soon as I receive your response and contact details with your ID, I will forward you my Identity, for you to know who you are dealing with. You will be compensated with 40% of this fund, please assure me of your keeping this topmost secret so that my job would not be jeopardized.
My Regards,
Simon Stewart"
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Comments
She had parted with over £250,000 of her own money before she cottoned on that it was a scam. She was a woman in her 40s/50s and of otherwise reasonable intelligence (so it seemed), so it's not as if it was some vulnerable little old lady.
I imagine her story is a fairly typical one. So the answer to your question OP, is that yes, there really are gullible people out there.
However, by writing it so badly, the people that pass (or fail?) the first test, i.e. don’t see the email for what is really is and perfect fodder for a scammer:
- These people are dim enough miss the glaring spelling errors so probably are of low intelligence.
- Being of low intelligence they’re probably not particularly wealthy.
- Lacking in wealth and being a bit dim, they’re probably keen to seize any available opportunity to get some free money while at the same time, unable to see the scam.
There’s your gullible target.
However, if the above is true and they’re targeting this type of person, if they’re skint, the scammer won’t be able to get much money of them so all a bit pointless really?
Dear Scammed person.
I am writing to inform you that the FBI has decided to refund the losses of anyone who has been scammed and lost money in the last 5 years. We have allocated 5 billion dollars for this purpose.
if you have been the victim of fraud, please reply and inform us how much you are claiming.
Yours sincerely.
Robert Mueller
Director of the FBI
I've also had them from Desmond Tutu...........
My grandparents get no end of letters saying they have won money if they just make a donation to a certain charity, or phone a number which is £1.50 a minute. I'm constantly reassuring them that they are right to bin these letters and completely ignore them!!!
I don't believe my grandparents to have low intelligence I just think they lived through a time where you could trust people and people did what they said they would do. I know people target the old for this reason and which makes me angry to say the least!!!
That one might have been genuine as he’s looking for funds to mend the church roof.:D
I was trying to remember the name of that annual prize draw that was thought to be a bit dodgy - was it the Readers Digest one or something similar? back before the internet. Generally speaking, I think sometimes I can be a bit gullible, I've sent (or donated) money to keep websites going and that sort of thing, on one or two ocassions and I've given money to one or two people, well I've certainly sent gifts and spent money, I also sent money by PayPal to someone I'd chatted to online, to pay for a concert ticket she desperately wanted but she paid me back as soon as she could afterwards. I like to think people are genuine and I have a decent enough rough judge of whats genuine but I may very well have been wrong at times, I have made mistakes and things (who hasn't? in life in general, I mean) but I've certainly never believed one of those quoted emails claiming im about to receive a fortune or something like that. If it sounds too good to be true, then it probably is.
You can be very stupid and very wealthy.
I found some boxes containing $8m.
I've bunged 'em in a safety box in Ghana.
I need to shift 'em.
I'd like you mind 'em 'til I get home.
Send me your ID details and I'll bung you $3m
Psst! Don't tell anyone about this."
If anyone fancies a punt I have his email address:D
Yep. Which is why I purposely used the word, "probably".
Why would a scammer want to target people who aren't wealthy? Although, it depends on what your definition of wealthy is.
In one case, they bled some guy dry, asking for more and more "fees" until, when it finally seemed like he was starting to lose confidence, they told him it was time for him to come out to Nigeria and collect the cash (bringing one final "fee" with him, of course) and then, when he arrived in Lagos, they kidnapped him.
I can't help thinking that the only reason we can be critical of people who've been suckered is simply that most of us haven't yet encountered a scam plausible enough to fool us but, geez, c'mon. It's hard to believe that anybody who's allowed out unsupervised would actually be daft enough to fall for a standard 419 scam.
Just shows how greedy ppl can be. Normally these scams tell you you can get heaps of money. If I had 250,000 to give I wouldnt be needing more money
Some people pay badly for their greed.
http://www.419eater.com/
http://www.419eater.com/
The scammers getting scammed!
Nor do I.
They get directed straight to my Junk folder with a warning that it's not trusted.
Something clearly triggers them though as, not having had one in a very long time, I've had another today from the philanthropist and business magnate Li Ka-Shing.
He's genuine but clearly the person using his name and asking me to respond is not.
He's offering $1.9m to randomly selected email addresses.
Once again it went direct to Junk with the warning.
£25 would do me
I love 419eater. Haven't been on there for ages. Thanks for reminding me it exists!
When reading about some people who have fallen for e-mails scams, you think surely there must have been alarm bells going off, but no the lure of untold riches trumps all doubts.