419 scams
The 419ers (so-called after the section of the Nigerian constitution outlawing fraud) are a democratic bunch when it comes to scamming victims. Last week in the UK, it emerged during a court case how an eye-surgeon was blind-sided by a 419er. Chinaenye Mokelu (44) sent a spam email to the UK seeking help to transfer his $300 million fortune to Britain. Needless to say, the cash didn't exist and Mokelu duped a consultant doctor into sending him st£352,000. He turned up in London at one point to show his hapless victim a suitcase of fake cash. Mokelu got five-years at Basildon Crown Court for his crimes. Read the court report here.
Labels: 419 scam, 419ers, black money
3 Comments:
Yes, it has now been maybe 12 or so years since I have been using the Internet, the first time I received a 419 email, I nearly fell for it, however, so many people now know of this scam that anyone still falling for this type of ubiquitous con really can be labelled as themselves quite greedy in nature.
The victim was a doctor, therefore, I would expect that such a person would have more intelligence and common-sense than to be duped by some con-artist.
I mean sending some idiot £352,000 is just plain stupid. He could have bought and paid for a lovely house with such a vast amount of money or hepled out some underpriviledged people or something. There are countless ways in which this money could have been spent sensibly instead of giving it to an online scammer.
Sometimes, the victims of these 419 scams also have to stop seeing through their rose tinted spectacles and greed and stop falling for get rich quick schemes.
Stop sending money to people you met through an email, even people that you have known for years can be fraudsters ready to dupe you at the drop of a hat, let alone some professional con-artist that you have established contact with over the Internet, of all places.
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(Just edited the typos in my last comment)
In simple terms, what I am saying in my post above is that victims also need to be accountable for their actions.
We read about this type of scam so often that you would have to be living under a rock, quite literally, to not know of or at least read or heard about it even once.
Besides, online, anyone can assume a fake identity a lot easier than in real life. So people need to be more aware of fraudulence online.
I was reading about a man who lay down in front of a train and committed suicide because he had been duped in some type of online romance scam.
The con artists are spending his money and having a whale of a time, in the meantime he is dead.
Don't be sucked into these online scams, that is the moral of the story here. If you want romance, go out into the real world and meet REAL people and stop fooling yourself with some fake non-existent online relationship with a phoney person.
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