Nigerian scammers come up with a new pitch

You might have received an email purportedly inviting you to assist or share a huge wealth. The catch is however, will require you to come up with an initial deposit to make the whole transaction happen.

This type of scam is known as “Nigerian Scam”. The scam is associated with Nigeria because it originated and is perpetrated frequently there.

This scam is also known as Advance Fee Fraud (AFF), or “4-1-9” fraud after the section of the Nigerian penal code which addresses fraud schemes, are often very creative and innovative.

According to the Scambuster.org, the goal of the scam artist is to delude the victim into thinking that he or she has been singled out to participate in a very lucrative – although questionable -arrangement. They go an extra mile by forging or falsifying an even arranging a meeting between the victim and “government officials” in real or fake government offices

Komunitikini recently has received an email from a reader requesting us to highlight a the email scam that surfaced lately regarding a compensation fund for ‘scammed victims’.

He also wanted to share his knowledge on internet scamming with readers of Komunitikini. The contents of the scam email that the reader received yesterday has been italicized.

___________________________________________________

Subject : SCAMMED VICTIM/ $900.000.00.USD BENEFICIARIES
From: “United Nations Compensation Fund”
To: [email protected]

Greetings to you,

SCAMMED VICTIM/ $900.000.00.USD BENEFICIARIES.
REF/PAYMENTS CODE: ECB/06654 $900.000.00.USD.

On behalf of the Malaysian National Sweeptakes Compensation Award,we wish to inform you of the results of the comprehensive web email search and wish to notify you as a beneficiary of $900.000.00.USD in compensation as a scam victim. This is to bring to your notice that we are delegated from the Malaysian National Sweeptakes Compensation Award in World Bank to pay 150 victims of scam $900.000.00.USD each.

You are listed and approved for this payment as one of the scammed victims to be paid this amount.This Award was promoted and sponsored by a conglomerate of some multinational companies in asia,africa,europe and america as part of their social responsibility to the citizens in the communities where they have operational base. We advice you to keep your winning information confidential until your claim has been processed and your money remitted to you as this is part of our security protocol to avoid double claiming and unwarranted abuse of this programme.

Do contact CITI BANK INTERNATIONAL BANK,CITI BANK for verification and release of your $900.000.00.USD that we have deposited with the CITI BANK MALAYSIA. The account log on will be presented to you by the bank in order to access the funds before releasing into your nominated bank account.You will transfer the funds into your nominated account on-line as the CITI BANK MALAYSIA will provide the necessary information to you. If you are willing to accept the funds, do contact the Managing Director of the CITI BANK MALAYSIA, with the following details:

You are to fill the appropriate form and submit to the bank.
[1] Full Names:________________
[2] Contact address______________________________
[3] Direct Telephone No: ___________________
|4| Occupation : ____________________________
Managing Director of the CITI BANK MALAYSIA
Name: Mr Abu Bakar Bin Saud
Email:[email protected]

Yours Faithfully,
Dr. David Adams
Coordinator.
Malaysian National Sweeptakes Compensation Award© 2011

____________________________________________

The reader said that he has been receiving many such spammed scam emails and he has the following advice to offer and how to look for tell-tale signs.

1.The rule of the thumb is “when something sounded too good to be true then it probably is”, there is no such thing as easy money and most of these scam mails offers rewards and compensations running into millions USD.

2.The Subject heading usually states huge amount of money or in the form of an appeal for assistance and politely written.

3.The Sender (From) email address is always from a personal email address and not from a corporate or organization email address which the scammer claimed to represent.

4.The Recipient (To) is most of time not addressed to you but to someone else or ‘undisclosed recipient’ Even if the mail is addressed to you, always look for other tell-tale signs.

5.Notice the scammer wrote “Malaysian National Sweeptakes Compensation Award in World Bank” which in fact it doesn’t exist at all.

6.All scam mails have one common request, they need you to ‘keep it strictly confidential’.

7.Another request is to ask for your personal particulars., it is a must for them.

8.Verify the organization that the scammer claimed to represent by doing a quick search on the Internet and pay particular attention to the exact spelling of the organization name in full, the full name of the person-in-charge which the scammer mentioned or claim to be and most importantly, the organization telephone contacts and email address.. The scammer may have done the same thing before sending the scam mail to you, just to convince you. Most of the time, one or two of the information provided by the scammer will not tally especially the email address and the telephone numbers.

9.It is common that the scammer will conclude by asking you to reply to a different email address from the one that was send to you.

10.Another common thing is the scammer will always address themselves as Mr., Miss, Mrs., Pastor, President, General before their names. You can check the names of the person and organization in the Consumer Fraud Reporting site by clicking this link.

He reminded readers to be always on the alert and to remember that these scamming syndicates are everywhere preying for unsuspecting and naive souls and they already have their accomplices stationed here in Malaysia too to fleece you.

So, when you come across such mail, it’s better to  just delete it.