Although this scam has its root from Nigeria dated a decade
back, nowadays, you receive similar scam letters from many
African countries, notably, Nigeria, Benin, Togo and even South
Africa.

The subject lines of these emails are pretty similar. Something
like: Business relationship, Urgent Assistance needed,
Soliciting for your assistance, A cry for help etc. Most of the
emails from this scam begin in the same way. Here are two
excerpts from most recent emails that we received:

"I am Engr Moses Ekpen a director in the budget and planning
department of the Federal Ministry of Petroleum and Natural
Resources (FMPNR), I had a seven man Tenders Board Committee in
charge of contract award and Payment approvals. I came to know
of you in my search for a reliable and reputable person to
handle a very confidential transaction, which involves the
transfer of a huge sum of money to a foreign account."

Or

"I am Mrs. Mariam Abacha, the widow of Gen. Sani Abacha, The
Late Nigerian Military Head of State. You were introduced to me
through the Chamber of Commerce. I am presently in distress and
under House arrest while my son Mohammed is undergoing trial in
Lagos and Abuja. He is presently detained in prison custody. The
government has frozen all the family account and auctioned all
our properties.

To save the family from total bankruptcy I have managed to ship
to Europe and Asia through a Shipping company, the sum of US20,
000,000.00 respectively kept by my late husband."

The essence of these emails are also basically the same – the
person although does not know you, thanks to your business
reputation, has decided to contact you with a very confidential
proposal to transfer a mind boggling amount of money from his
country to any foreign land.

There could be numerous stories but the bottom line is they
require your help to transfer the amount. For your service they
will promise you something from 10 to 40% of the whole amount.
There would be a telephone no or an email address to contact the
person.

You may wonder how they swindle people.

There are various ways that the crooks rip off their victims.
Some of the most commons ones of them are described below:

They will ask you to open a bank account under their name. On
their second step, they will ask you to deposit a sum of say US$
10000 to that account, explaining if the account does not have
any decent amount, the officials those who are responsible for
transferring the promised millions of dollars would become
suspicious and won't authorize the transaction. Once you
deposited the asked sum, they simply withdraw it and disappear.
Usually they choose a bank where they might have some
connections. So you, after losing your money, do not get any
help from the bank either.

They will ask you to send some merchandize or gifts for the
officials they need to bribe in order to make the transactions
of the assumed millions of dollars smoothly. Naturally, you
never hear from them once you sent the requested gifts to their
address.

We even heard stories like this one: A man was persuaded to come
to Nigeria to look after the transaction by himself. Over there
he was kept hostage until he shifted all his liquid assets to
the thugs.

Looking at the increasing quantity of scam emails that we
receive, this only convinces that many fall for this seemingly
simple trap. According to FBI these swindlers have defrauded
millions of dollars from gullible people.

There could be other variations of this scam, next time you read
an email that feels suspicious, just delete it! There are other
ways of making money!

Some words of cautions! Although most of these scams originate
from African countries, please do not generalize and consider
that all companies form these countries are bad. As usual a few
people are responsible for tarnishing the reputation of a
country.