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Ignoring
the advice of friends, irrationally believing in the ludicrous
promises of a mysterious foreign rascal and investing your life
savings in an unlikely-sounding illegal international money
laundering scheme often works out just fine. In fact, it
usually turns out the naïve trusting investors who ignore warnings
from skeptical friends and relatives end up in the chips. At
least that's how it works in the movies.
In 2001, we received a call from a close friend of a veterinarian
who was being sucked in by a Nigerian scam artist. This friend
explained that he had shown this vet the Nigerian Fraud Letter
Section of our Web site and the sample fraud letters. Although
one sample matched up pretty much word for word with this vet's
initial communication and this victim acknowledged that similar
letters specifically targeting veterinarians might be hoaxes, he knew
his deal was different and he would soon be a
multi-millionaire. He pointed out that his contact had been
different than the fraud letters--because it had been addressed to
him by name. In fact, this veterinarian confided that his
Nigerian "partner" had told him about some evil villains
in Nigeria who run scams like this and warned him not to respond to
any similar offers he might receive so he wouldn't get ripped off.
This friend asked if there was anything we could think of that he
could do to convince this veterinarian that he was being victimized
and that the $50,000 he had "invested" thus far was gone
forever. We recommended that the vet direct inquiries to
official sources, such as the Secret Service, and that he check out
the Web sites shown in our Nigerian Fraud Links.
We later learned the veterinarian didn't want to contact law
enforcement because the deal was obviously illegal and he just
refused to believe that he was being victimized. He continued
to ignore the warnings of his friend and lost considerably more of
his assets, before finally catching on.
Another victim--who claimed to have conducted research into Nigerian
business frauds, but determined that "his deal" was
legitimate--lost more than just his money. This attorney, who
ignored warnings from his banker and others, was unable to continue
funding the ongoing advance fee demands of a Nigerian fraudster on
his own and began "borrowing" money from his client's
accounts. Before he finally realized he was being victimized,
he had poured over $1 million into this fraud. When he
eventually asked for police assistance in recovering the lost funds,
his embezzlement was discovered. He was sentenced to three
years and ordered to repay the funds he embezzled. He has
since filed for bankruptcy and lost any entitlements to his family
inheritance.
In another case, we received a call from a police officer who had
received a scam letter and shown it to his CPA. The CPA
thought it looked credible and each "invested" $5,000 in a
standard advance fee scam after reportedly checking with an ATF
source who allegedly told them it sounded like a legitimate
proposal. This police officer, however, realized it was a scam
when the next request for money was made and he found a similar
sample letter on our site, but he couldn't convince his CPA partner
to pull out, even after directing him to our Web site. The CPA
refused to believe it was a scam and was continuing on his own and
this police officer was unable to convince him to give it up.
All Nigerian proposals
involving an illicit transfer of millions of dollars out of that
country into a "partner's" account and offering this
"partner" a substantial fee for participating are
frauds. There are no exceptions.
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