Oregon Woman Loses $400,000 to Nigerian E-Mail Scam

Luckily, I know all about what goes on in Nigeria. I used to work for a relay center for the deaf and hard of hearing. We would get so many people from Nigeria pretending that they were deaf and using the service over the internet. They would try to call places and buy 400 t-shirts or 20 snowmobiles (in Nigeria?) with stolen credit cards. I can't believe this lady fell for this. I may be young, but I'm not naive enough to believe that some total stranger wants to give ME money. It just doesn't work that way.

i get atleast a dozen mail a week from these nigerians. once they gave me their contact's bank account. i immediately sent out that to the Bank concerned and the revenue intelligence dept. months later i heard one guy was arrested. i dont know if it was based on my email or not. but i am happy that one arrest led to dozens of nigerians being rounded from across my country and most of them were partof scam gangs. greed for money blind men and women.

I live in Oregon. i feel bad for her but if she had been warned then basically its her own fault . That ddoesnt make it right what those people did to her. There has to be a way to stop them I get ten to twenty emails a day with those scams Look at the one i got just today. They are getting more and more tricky in how they present them. [i]-----Inline Attachment Follows----- Dear friend, This letter may come to you as a surprise due to the fact that we have not yet met. I have to say that I have no intentions of causing you any pains. As you read this, I don't want you to feel sorry for me, because, I believe everyone will die someday. My name is Mr. Mike Smith, a merchant in London, but taking treatment now. now I have been diagnosed with prostate and esophageal cancer that was discovered very late due to my laxity in caring for my health. It has defiled all form of medicine and right now, I have only about a few months to live according to medical experts.I have decided to give my money in a bank to charity organizations, as I want this to be one of the lastgood deeds I do on earth. So far, I have distributed money to some charity organizations in the Asia, London and Ireland and i will want you to help me distribute some of this money too and i will appreciate your reply in my very confidential email: mikesmith@grad.com Thank you, Mike Smith[/i] Its outrageous to say the least

LOL I have gotten so many emails from nigeria never ever trust an email from nigeria because its more then likely it will be a spam. Since I hear that country is one of the biggest scam country in the world. It seems like every scam comes from nigeria.

me too. i always received email scam before and until now. but i know it is really scam. and it is to good to be true. $400,000.00 is really a big amount of money. it is equivalent to 19,600,000.00 pesos here in the phillipines and for me as an ordinary employee will not get it from my job that because my salary is only 383.33 which is equivalent to $7 a day.

Hey Hey ! That just sucks big time . All these people are are con men and women ! They really get your trust and then you are sucked in . I have heard of them becoming your friend and then they slowly open up to you , and talk of how bad their life is and then you feel so bad that you offer a little money , and then they ask , and then they want to come over to america . Ah, just a big mess . what is the saying the good is sometimes mixed in with the bad . i say just follow your gut . You know that poor lady was such in debt that she was hoping and wishing no matter how slim the change would of been . Times are hard lately , but if it sounds too good to be true then it is . Peace N love

I have not responded to such emails but do know of at least one person that has. When we are constantly being reminded of such scams no one should fall for such a thing. Greed tends to get the best of some people and they just hope they will really receive this large sum of cash. If someone I have never heard of seems to be willing to offer me money it must be too good to be true. :)

Even I have received such mails and I thought anybody and everybody with email accounts knows these scams for what these are. I was all the more shocked to know that she kept on doing this (sending money) for over two years. The love of lucre possessed her so much she even blew away her husband’s savings. I am feeling sorry for both of them…it definitely is a very costly lesson.

I never fell for a scam. I do not trust offers that come in the email. We also get offers for vacation scams and some of them are so good they are almost real. So what vacation scam did your cousin fall for? Was it the Costa Rica one? Because they called my husband and said he had won something. He did not want to take them up on it because it did not sound right.

You can only warn someone so much but ultimately the decision is there's. She was foolish and irresponsible with her money but in honesty if she wouldn't have fallen for this scam it probably would have been another. If I remember this scam accurately, you give so much money to get a huge amount of money released to you...so in other words it was a matter of greed, pure and simple. I feel bad that she lost it but it's her own fault. As for her husband, if I was him, I'd start handling all the money before they end up in a cardboard box on the street corner. [b]~~AT PEACE WITHIN~~ **STAND STRONG IN YOUR BELIEFS**[/b]

I just recently saw a 20/20 where they were featuring the Nigerian scams. Too bad some people got taken. I've never been conned like that, though I've seen some emails that I just knew were scams. I ignore and delet most email if I don't know who sent it.

How could she be stupid to believe that? I have received the same email for like 8 years I guess but didnt believe any of them . hasnt she heard about it in the news? Nope, so far I havent been involved in a scam. I hope I wont be involved with any.

Me too get such mails everyday on my yahoo mail, and I just select them & move them to spam, but still I keep on getting such mails everyday, nearly 4 or 5. Few days back, I started a discussion & asked everybody some suggestions, but nobody knew how to stop this mails. Actually, it is more painful, bcoz I got these emails in inbox & not spam folder.

Oh my God, this is so terrible. I also got email, actually forwarded email about earning money, but if I don't know the sender then I will discard it. It's so frustrating that internet is being abuse by other people. Let's just pray that it won't happen to us, now my question is, how safe are we from all these scams that happening in the internet?how can we know that it is scam? I myself already experience this scam from quickpaidsurvey which promises big bucks, but after signing up with them and paying $60 I did not heared any from them anymore. These people who organized this crime should be punished to prevent having anymore victims.