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Secrets of International Trading © copyright
The Nigerian Scam
The Nigerian Scam, over the years I have received hundreds of letters and email from Nigeria from
people I have never heard of.
The letter claims to be from an official of Nigeria who has a very large
sum of money - always in many millions of dollars and can be as
large as a hundred million dollars! Instead, he needs to transfer the money to an account in the United States - and yours is the magic account that he needs! All you have to do is give him your account number and the money will be transferred. You will get a quick 10% or 20% or ten million or whatever for doing virtually nothing. There are cases where they need a few your company blank letter head plus company bank account, for them to transfer the money.
Then they forge your
signature on the letter head asking your bank to transfer your money in-to their account. |
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Wow. Seems great! Except that if you do call the phone number you will be asked to forward a small (a few thousand dollars) sum of money to cover the bank fees. If you do that, then a larger sum will be needed for "bribes to officials" perhaps. Then comes taxes, followed by still more fees, bribes, taxes and whatever else these scammers can dream-up. There are cases where they contact you and would like to visit and finalize payment arrangement and getting you to issue a letter saying that it is for business to can get a visa from their consulate to visit you. Then they get you to book the best hotel in town and confirm their visit -- to cut a long story short -- at the end of the day... *YOU* end-up footing the hotel bill and loosing a large sum of money for fund transfer fees, bribes, taxes and whatever else these scammers can come-up while they gives you all kind of excuses for the delay in the payment to your bank account and getting you to pay for more and more while they are enjoying a nice holiday at your expenses. These scams are based upon is simple greed, followed by the unwillingness of people to give up what they've already "invested". So people keep throwing away money, for the simple reason that they have already given a certain amount and they have to get it back somehow.
The worst part about these scam is that high officials in the country of
Nigeria are apparently involved and there are reports of people flying to
Nigeria and getting held hostage for various sums of money. |
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