I have received a Email with a well known attempt to scam. It has been sent by a new member: "aishamel"

I issue this warning just in case somebody does not know the trick behind it

I'm beginning to think that there should be an entrance exam/test to become a member.

What ever happened to parents teaching their children manners??

stupid scammers...

I can smell some irony in your comment and I believe (based on old comments that I had not forgotten) that you do not like my style.

If this is the case, it would be more polite to avoid commenting negatively if you do not know what's going on. If it is not, please accept my apologies. It could be I have become too paranoid in this moment.

Anyway, I provide some more details:

Unfortunately in this case it is much more than bad manners or careless parents.

It is well known a criminal deception to scam people. It is the typical tale of a third world country, poor widow (or a poor, defenceless girl or some other variants) that claims her husband/family member/etc. passed away and left her a bunch of money that for different reasons (according to the variant) she cannot retrieve personally and for this reason requests the help of the potential victim, normally someone in the developed world.

I have signalled my own initial post to Admin, because I believe this kind of criminals have no place in this Forum, no matter how wide-minded one could be. I hope you can agree at least with this.


In return, the person accepting the deal would receive a hefty percentage of the fortune. You can imagine how the tale continues.

<Added>

Soryy I have mixed up the paragraphs; though not too much important, the final sentence should appear before "I have signalled..."

No, I was being serious. I know of one particular EX-member of this forum who ended up being a friend's youngest sibling. His intentions were to annoy the daylights out of people. And I can say from experience that his parents did not monitor his actions online, nor did they scold him when doing illegal activities.

I'm going to go with a few of these dumb members are 13yr old kids who don't understand the meaning of being polite. Which is sad! Sometimes I wish there were regulations regarding the internet. But then again, that would open a whole new can of worms.

Just spank your kids, ok?

<Added>

Oh, one more thing.

Why does a person in a third world country have access to the internet? Especially a woman in a third world country. From my understanding, women are treated poorly and have even less of a right to access technology over a man, if it is, in fact, in the region.

That should be the scammers first clue. Dont make up some ridiculous claim! If you're trying to do illicit things, make them more believable.

Lera is right and this is a quite old scam. I have received such messages not less than a dozen of times. However, it is the first time I receive it by the Forum closed mail system, which requires a previous registering process. Here it is more than a general internet problem, but a Forum administration problem. That was my intention of starting this thread, calling the attention of ADMIN to close his/her account.

msbrown1229, I gave my apologies in advance and I repeat them now. I could not connect your wishes of better children education with the existence of these criminal networks. I still do not agree with that, though I accept your position. Probably you have no children yet, but please consider that not everything bad in this world is to be blamed on we, parents.

And I do not think this is a joke made by early teenagers, but the work of well organized international criminal network. They send, say, a million messages like this and they can expect to have at least 0.1% of replies, that still amount to 1000 confirmed candidates. Not a bad rate.

I also agree the scam is rather obvious; however, many people have lost much money running behind this chimera. Once this initial phase of distrust (the one we are now) is overcome, the scam continues in a very convincing way, including bank accounts, personal meetings and the like. This is also the first time that I receive this message including the supposed photograph of the "poor black girl" of this version of the tale.

"Why does a person in a third world country have access to the internet? Especially a woman in a third world country. From my understanding, women are treated poorly and have even less of a right to access technology over a man, if it is, in fact, in the region."

I live in a so called "third world country" and what you told about women and internet access (and all the other stuff that comes with it) is so far distant from the truth...

Generalization sometimes is a big "scam" we've got to avoid.

Most frequently the story is supposedly based in an African country (Nigeria used to be the favourite), but also at other parts of the world.

I got an email the other day from the wife of the former king of Burkina Faso, they have a great investment for me and refer to me as "Dear One", now there is a sound investment

Concerning those impressions that women are considered inferior and therefore denied access to many assets and commodities, I believe this can be true or not; it depends a lot on the type of society and also on their mainstream religion.

It is not a peculiarity of third world countries in itself. In fact, in many countries women are in charge of the family economy and the men just make war, hunt for food or do close to nothing.

There are important projects of "micro-credits" going on in some countries with potential, where small amounts of money (but very valuable for them) are loaned or given to family groups to start a small business or developing their own economy (cattle, agriculture).

These micro-credits are almost always given to the women in the family. It can be said that the rate of failure is extremely low, most of the money is recovered andso can be loaned again and again.

These societies often have null or very little access to internet, even to TV and to drinkable water according to our standards.

The scammer always refer to important people, in third/second world countries that could have had the opportunity of making money by devious/illegal ways; they are said to have died without having the opportunity of recovering the money that is always abroad and leave their families to this problem to solve. So they request the help of a good soul in Europe or USA that could help them out and receive a good percentage in return.

Another variant is a letter form a lawyer saying that your family name is the same or very similar to smb's name, who was in a similar condition of the other version of the story.

This supposed coincidence of names would allow the candidate to claim the fortune in his own name (and advance apart of the the percentage to the scammer).

the premise of a "con" is to convince the sucker that they can get something for ....almost nothing

and the intention is that

the con artist leaves the sucker with essentially...nothing.

If someone approaches you with a proposition that seems too good to be true, it probably isn't.

You are right; this kind of scamming stories is in fact old as time is. So is the human greed and the ability of others to take profit from the blindness it provokes.

I remember as a child, stories about people being caught by a very popular scam we called "The Uncle Tale", a similar story as todays', but not so international as the new technologies and easy travelling allow us these times.

As a child, there were two other extremely popular scams: buying a street post box and buying a tramway.

At that time many people came to live in the big cities from remote small villages. They brought all their money with them and were easy prey for the scammers of that time (remote times also, I am afraid).

In my high school, the upperclassmen would try sell elevator passes to the 4th floor swimming pool.
The building didn't have an elevator, a 4th floor or a pool but some freshmen bought the passes.

"Just spank your kids, ok?"

Hahaha!! I think that even in this day in age that that won't even help some of these kids. Let's try actual parenting for a change. That is a whole new concept to a lot of them!

That is one of the reasons that I have my email button turned off.

I had it turned off for many months... until I turned it on just to receive the scam message. It is off again and so will remain for long.