419ers threaten terrorism charges Advance-fee fraudsters have joined the fight against international terrorism, worried Reg reader Guy reports. The Lads from Lagos have turned their hands to money-laundering investigations, and have come up with some very grave charges against our man, which speak for themselves: ANTI-TERRORIST AND MONETARY CRIMES DIVISION …
@ Matt21: "You have to keep in mind that this purports to come from the US, so normal standards of grammar and spelling don't apply ;-)"
Wuja meen normel standerdz dont applie? Uv korse they duu.....
Mine's thee won with thEe elektronik speel chucker inn the frunt poket. Ore maybee tHe reere poket, I fergit.
It looks legit to me.. though if they know the address then why not just pop over with the loot and if the face-to-face checks are Ok then they leave the money, else they can arrest the person.
I'm sure if someone with a badge and a lorry-load of cash turned up on my doorstep and asked to look at my passport I'd be happy to help.
Seems all this emailing and acquisition of forms is rather superfluous.
ttfn
Or at least send fbi folks around. Or at least used to
We're talking about 2000 if i'm not wrong, my mum used to work in a nut house in Italy.
One of the guests there kept on sending letters to Clinton, the Queen and so on saying that he was being kept prisoner against his will. They were being sent during his daily supervised walk, since there was no harm in letting him do it.
One day 5 people from the FBI showed up to check if his claim were genuine. US taxpayers must have been happy to fund this sort of investigations.
All the nurses were very glad to receive them anyway cause they were tall, smart and goodlooking.
P.S: the letters didn't contain any coded messages - it was a plain *help, i am sane but locked up at a nut house, that sort of captivity which allows me to send letters like this to the FBI. Find me at the nut house*
I've been getting these for months. Maybe it's just because I somehow receive a cornucopia of about 50 419 scam mails a day, of all ilks, but it's hardly new.
The funny thing is that I noticed an ad in The Economist - a full page thing in 'tenders' - from a (the?) Nigerian oil company. It almost read like a 419 spam; it had wacky grammar; it was for "oil lifting"; it used random words in CAPITAL letters; it talked about 'modalities'...
I always figured that the 419 spams were just incompetent, but now I'm wondering if ALL business writing in Nigeria is like that - some kind of wacky mashup of out-of-date Queen's English and self-standardized bad grammar. I'm pretty sure that The Economist isn't accepting ads from actual 419ers, and this ad was demanding that applicants do at least $500,000 a month in business, etc... so it was legit. But it READ like a standard 419 spam, just a little bit more professional.
Strange.
It would have been a lot scarier if they had cc'd the Inland Revenue. Somehow I can see the boys and gals at the tax office whacking on a 42% capital gains tax, and sending you a bill for 6.43 million with no further questions asked.
Might be cheaper to pay the Nigerian extortionists instead.
...the FBI just happened to have the his email address handy or he would never have known he'd come into a fortune (well after sending the $10,000 payment for the certificate that is).
10.5 million eh? That lucky guy is going to get the entire Nigerian GDP.
There must be some gully bills still sending the cash though for these things to still be going on.
I got one from none other than General Peter Schoomaker [sic] himself:
"Gen. Schoomaker Peter Jan (RET)
Commanding Generals & Chiefs
Chiefs of Staff 1775-2005.
United States
Army Center of Military
My name is General Peter Schoomaker, the former Chief of Army Staff (C.A.S). Actually,I acquired 15.5 Million US Dollarsfrom an oil business I did in Iraq with an Iraqi citizen. I need a good partner who i can trust to assist me in receiving the consignment on my behalf.
All arrangement to bring out the consignment from Iraq have being concluded with a United Nations diplomat. I need someone who can receive it since i can't receive it directly due to my status.
I am offering you 20% of the total sum for your assistance and the 80% will be transferred to my account which I will instruct you in my next email to you on how it will be transferred to my account. Your own part of this deal is to find a safe place where the funds can be sent to.
Your immediate attention to this serious matter is urgently requested and a timely response regarding your plan of action will be appreciated.
Best Regard,
Gen Schoomaker Peter Jan (RET)"
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