Not all Nigerian email scams come from Nigeria although Nigeria is still a hub for this type of scam in which you are told that under some pretense you are to receive a huge amount of money for nothing. Of course, once you correspond with the sender of the email, you soon learn that it takes payment after payment from you under various guises in order to receive the money and, of course, ultimately, you receive nothing, but the scammer has managed to trick you out of your money. Here is a copy of such an email that I recently received:
“May God touch your heart as you read this message. I know this maybe a surprise to you but i want you to consider me as a friend because my mind choose you. My name is Waleed Hassan, a retired Oil Merchant from Tripoli, Libya. I am currently in a hospital suffering from the cancer of the lung as i write this message to you. I am a blessed man, but my life has been one of hardship and suffering because of bad health. suicide in my case is not the answer. I suffered the death of family and loved ones, due to the battle that went between the Gaddafi soldiers and the Independent Rebels in my country. My condition is really deteriorating and according to my doctors in all indication regards to medical analysis, it is quite obvious that i may not live for more than 2months. This is because the cancer has gotten to a very bad stage.
Presently I am contacting you because of the funds i lodge with the HSBC BANK when i was still working in England. I choosed from my mind to entrust this amount to a stranger and my mind choose you among different profiles that i have just viewed.
Once the money is transferred to you, i want you to keep 15% of the money for yourself and help me distribute the rest 85% to the street kids, charity organisations and different poor homes. The fund is currently with the HSBC BANK and upon my instruction, it will immediately be transferred to you. If you feel honoured to do the good work for me, Please kindly reply on my Private Email so i can further this with you: haswaled@gmail.com”
This email is typical of many others and filled with poor grammar and spelling errors and of course the story is utterly preposterous. So who would possibly fall for this? Only the truly gullible and that is the very strategy used by these scammers. They do not want to waste their time on people who might eventually see through their scam so they make their plea as outrageous as possible so that if someone takes the bait, they are likely to be able to cheat that person out of their money.
TIPS
By now, we all know that no one is giving you something for nothing and even the most gullible among us must ask themselves, why they were singled out for such good fortune. The answer is that this is a scam and the best thing you can do is to enjoy the humor of these emails, but never respond to them.