Nigerian email scams and hoaxes have been bouncing around the Internet for years. The email scam basically consists of a scenario where the con artist states that he or someone has a large sum of money that for various reasons. In return you will get a large sum of cash.

Nigerian Email Hoax

The email scam has now been modified to involve American travelled to Sydney and died…here’s a look at the new story, the history, the victims in the past, how to avoid it…

Good day,

I hope this email finds you in good health. I am writing from a hospital here in Sydney, Australia where I am the Chief Surgeon. I was directed to contact you regarding patient of mine named Norman Davidson who died yesterday as a result of complications from a surgery. He was an American citizen who was brought into surgery after an auto accident that damaged his spinal cord. The surgery was unsuccessful and Mr. Davidson passed away yesterday during the procedure at about 9:43 PM.

Before he went into surgery, Mr. Davidson was aware that his chances of making it through the surgery were very slim. He was scared of going into surgery. According to him, he has not been living his life very well and has not been good to people around him and was really scared that his chances of making it through the surgery were slim.

As per doctor-patient confidentiality; he gave me information about his consignment being delivered to New York. The consignment is being delivered by a diplomatic courier who is supposed to have arrived New York by now. The consignment contains 14.5 million dollars and some documents which include clearance papers, insurance documents, company documents and all essential documents required for the clearance and banking of the funds. The funds are part of the money that was to be used by Mr. Davidson for setting up a business in Albany, New York. Mr. Davidson was on his way to Sydney airport for a flight to New York in order to meet the diplomatic courier for the collection of the consignment but was unfortunate to be involved in the auto crash.

His wishes were that if he couldn’t make it through the surgery, you should be contacted with full details of how to collect consignment and donate the larger part of the funds to charity. According to Mr. Davidson, he does not have any close family members or relatives who are going to handle the consignment as he wishes. His wife and only son died in a plane crash in 1990 and his relatives are not to be trusted as they are going to misappropriate the funds and use it for their personal gains. Mr. Davidson’s main wish before he died was for the larger part of the funds to be donated to charity. According to him, when you receive the consignment, you are to find a reputable charity organization and donate 70% to them. Keep 20% for your self and the remaining 10% will go to the hospital. I will personally fly to the US to meet you so as to collect the hospital’s share.

The diplomatic courier arrived New York yesterday, and he has been informed that you are going to call him and provide him with the new delivery address for the consignment. Note that you will be responsible for paying the delivery charges for delivering the consignment from New York to your address as Mr. Davidson only paid the delivery charges to New York.

Because of the confidentiality nature of Mr. Davidson’s wishes, you can only call me on my home phone number when am not at work. I will send you my home phone number as soon as I read from you so that I can provide you with the contact number of the diplomatic courier in New York and the code for collecting the consignment. I will also send you the copy of the waybill for the consignment and a copy of Mr. Davidson’s passport so that you can print them out and show them to the diplomatic courier on arrival. He will need all these details before releasing the consignment to you.

Finally, I will need the following information from you so that I can forward it to the diplomatic courier:

1. Your full names
2. Your mailing address (NOT P.O.Box)
3. Your phone numbers.

Awaiting your reply

Dr. Peter Haertsch , MD
25 Rocklands Road,
North Sydney, NSW 2060
Austalia

How does the fraud work? The bait is the fictional millions of dollars described in each one of these letters. The goal is to get you to come up with money for the “expenses” required to transfer those millions to you. The victim thinks, a few hundred or a few thousand dollars is trivial when $31 million is at stake. Each demand for more money is claimed to be the very last obstacle before the big money is released. Sometimes, the victim is lured to Nigeria, where even worse things happen.

Why is it called “Nigerian Fraud”?  Regardless of the country or countries mentioned in the letter — even countries located outside of Africa — the fraudsters are usually Nigerian.

Does anyone really fall for this? Yes!!! ABC News investigated Nigerian e-mail scams, called “419 scams,” in 2007. The scammers target wealthy Americans, or “mugus,” asking them to pay thousands of dollars in “processing fees” before they can collect on the big payout. The victims eventually discover the promised riches are a fraud.

Ed Mezvinsky, a former Democratic congressman from Iowa, is serving a seven-year sentence for fraud after getting caught up in a series of Nigerian e-mail scams. Mezvinsky traveled to Nigeria numerous times and ultimately lost more than $3 million as a victim of the scammers.

Victims of the fraud sometimes fall directly into crime by “borrowing” or stealing money to pay the advanced fees, thinking an early payday is imminent. Credit-card fraud, check kiting, and embezzlement are among the crimes committed to pay the advances, with an expectation of having the money to repay the unauthorized loans.

  • Former Alcona County (Michigan) Treasurer Thomas A. Katona was sentenced to 9-14 years for his embezzlement of more than US$1.2 million in county funds in a Nigerian fraud scheme, which represented 25% of the county’s budget for that year.
  • Another example of this was Robert Andrew Street, a Melbourne-based financial adviser, who fleeced his clients for over AU$1 million which he sent to the scammers in the hope of receiving US$65 million in return. Eventually the Australian Securities and Investments Commission investigated the victim, who had now become a conman himself.
  • Another example was a bookkeeper for Michigan law firm Olsman Mueller & James who in 2002 emptied the company bank account of US$2.1 million in expectation of a US$4.5 million payout.
  • John W. Worley fell for a Nigerian scam and was convicted of taking money under false pretenses.
  • According to Kurt Eichenwald, author of The Informant, Mark Whitacre defrauded Archer Daniels Midland, a food products manufacturer for which he was a division president, embezzling US$9 million during the same period of time that he was acting as an informant for the FBI in a price fixing scheme that ADM was involved in. His illegal activities in trying to procure funds for payment of his supposed Nigerian benefactors cost him his immunity in the price-fixing scandal, according to Eichenwald’s book, The Informant. Eichenwald lost his credibility, his job, and his career in journalism because of lying about his payments to a source in a recent case.
  • James Lieber, author of Rats in the Grain and an attorney, also wrote a book about Whitacre in which he disagreed with Eichenwald’s conclusions about Whitacre and the Nigerian scam.

Why is this article so important? Many people are still being targeted and lost their money. You need to be educated about the danger because the scammers are also very creative in their pursuit with different stories and scenarios. If you want to see the creativity flare of the Nigerians, here’s a link to all 542 examples of the email

What damage will they cause? Monetary loss, physical harm or death, kidnapping and emotional harm.

What should you do? One simply strategy is to ignore the emails because if it’s too good to be true, it usually is. Don’t reply. If you want something done about this, send the email to FBI so that the scammers can be caught, less future victims. Do include the header of the email. The bottom line is don’t get involved, even though so many people still are.

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