Many of you may never have even heard of the Republic of Benin which is an African country that has been the subject matter of many recent scams, such as found in the email below which I recently received.  Apparently the scammers believe that if you receive an email from Nigeria, you will be skeptical, but if you receive one from Benin, you will be overcome with joy at your good luck.  In any event, the email below is an exact copy of one that I received earlier this week.  I did not include the email address of the person who sent me the email because the address appeared to be that of a legitimate person whose email account had been hijacked and made a part of a Botnet, which occurs when scammers and identity thieves manage to steal access to your email account in order to send out fraudulent emails in order to cover their tracks.  I urge you to go through the scamicide website/blog to learn more about botnets and what to do if your account has been hijacked and becomes a part of a botnet.  Never respond to emails like the one below because if you respond in any way, all you will succeed in doing is either getting scammed or letting the scammers know that they have a real person with whom to deal.  Either way you are in trouble.  The best thing you can do is delete the email.

Good Day Dear Beneficiary,

This is to bring to your notice that after the meeting held by the board ministry of trustee together with the federal ministry of finance Benin republic, your fund has been approved due to the instruction from the president of the federal republic of Benin Dr. Boni Yayi, Mr. president has give the mandate to release all the pending compensation fund that has not been released so far in which you are among of the beneficiary.

The compensation fund was awarded earlier January 15th 2009, we discovered that you have been having hard time in the system of receiving the fund but still no luck yet, we also understood that you have made so much down payment to this country Benin republic but you were dealing with the wrong people.

Today dated 27th November 2012, your fund is now under the custody of the ministry of finance Benin republic because we want to handle everything financially this time in other to make sure that nobody was scammed and no wrong payment is made, note that we don’t want what happened in the time past to repeat again and that is why we are taking charge of everything concerning your compensation fund.

It is my pleasure to tell you that we have to open another new payment file for you and everything will be documented in our office here with the help and instructions from the ministry of finance and the opening of the new payment file with our office profile will cost you the only money you have to spend in this matter in which the amount is $80.00 only.

You are advised to go and send the needed $80.00 through western union with the information below.

Receiver name is Ozemenam Michael Country is Benin republic City is Cotonou Test question is who made you? Answer is God the Father Sender name is required…….. Money transfer control number (mtcn) is needed…….

My best regards,

Eze Mathew Finance Minister Benin republic E-Mail;(federalministryoffinance844@yahoo.com) Phone +229 68037949

TIPS

One of the first indications that this is a scam is that the address from which it appears to have come from is that of a person with an email address from somewhere other than the country from which it represents in the email it is coming from.  In the case of this particular email, a Canadian email address was hijacked to send out the phony email.  Bad grammar is rampant throughout the email and is another indication that the email is a scam.  In this particular scam, you might also ask yourself, why would you be possibly receiving money from a compensation fund from a country where you have had absolutely no contact?  Finally, if you need further evidence that it is a scam, merely Google the words “Republic of Benin scam” and see what comes up.  It will astound you.